Run, Hide, Revenge
by maxigrumpling
Summary: A dying woman. A compulsion to intervene. A pair on the run from a family who would interfere. Who shot her and why? How can he help her find out, resolve it and remain true to his nature and the expectations of his family? Edward and Bella OOC. Lemons. Jake lovers need go no further. Compete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: SM owns Twilight.**

 **This little story is seriously OCC and as such there are known holes in the setup.**

 **I've found myself bored to tears by the simpering, confounding Bella's written where she is portrayed as confused, weak and willing to just stand behind Edward. I wanted to write a stronger, more ruthless Bella and in doing so had to write a more ruthless Edward.**

 **For those of you who have a dislike for our beloved vampires who embrace the predator inside them you might want to walk away now.**

 **And for those Jake lovers amongst the Fanfiction universe, you might want to run away now. Don't walk. Run.**

 **This story is short and simple. Much more simple than my usual style. There isn't a lot of place setting and there is no back story or explanations as to what our two main characters are and can or cannot do. We all know these characters by now and as such I've done away with all the boring back stories.**

 **As ever thanks for reading.**

 **Cheers, Maxi.**

* * *

' _There aint no way she's surviving that,' I_ hear as the black SUV skids towards me.

I have to swerve quite violently to miss hitting it as I take the corner myself. I curse its driver as I correct my own vehicle and continue on towards my home.

It's a strange thought to hear – even mentally – and I'd heard some pretty strange thoughts in my century on this earth.

I check my mirror but the SUV is long gone. Fully around the corner and out of sight by the time I have the thought to check its plate number.

There's nothing untoward or amiss in my street. There's nobody about as it's the humans dinner time. As I move along the street I can hear the thoughts of my neighbours going about their business.

Mrs Roberts in number four is cursing as she's made pot roast that is rapidly drying out because her husband is late home from work.

Mallory in number seven is deep in conversation with a prospective new beau via Skype, all the while thinking about the guy who had dumped her just a week earlier for being too clingy.

Jack and Anna in number twelve are struggling to explain to their twin daughters that it's not nice to throw dog shit at the postman and Hannah in number fourteen is watching Wheel of Fortune with her TV turned way up as usual.

It's all so normal and I smile to myself as I pull my car into my own driveway at number seventeen.

I like it here. Normal is nice. This neighbourhood is so normal and so nice I think I'd like to stay a little longer than I normally would in such a place. I can come and go freely here under the cloudy, rainy skies. Nobody gives a damn about what I do for a living, how old I am, why I'm on my own. They're all so busy leading their normal lives themselves nobody had ever given a thought to me.

I liked that. A lot.

It was unusual for me.

The smell of fresh, human blood assaults me as I open my car door. For half a second I want it. Another half a second later and I already crave it.

I shake my head and involuntarily slip into a low crouch. I range my hearing out but still can't hear anything out of place. I look up and down the street but there's nobody outdoors. No other cars moving in either direction. But the scent is strong. Fresh. Delicious. Like heroin to an addict that hadn't had a fix in a year.

I crouch lower and listen for another half a minute and then I'm running. Full tilt. Straight towards the scent.

A softer background scent begins to emerge as I streak up the street at full speed. Cordite. A gun had recently been fired in the street but nobody is rushing about panicking, as humans usually did. Probably used a silencer I think as I run.

I see the shattered glass from the back window of the vehicle at number twenty seven and I slow my run to a jog. I listen again before rounding the vehicle and coming headlong into the scent of the blood fully.

It's a woman. Slumped in the driver's seat and bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the neck.

I can hear her breathing but it's shallow. I hold my breath as I approach her.

As I come around I can see that the wound is through and through. And it's probably fatal judging by the gurgling coming from her throat and the sheer amount of blood on her upper body. Her torn flesh is ragged at the edges of the wound and there is a fair amount of it on the steering wheel and windshield.

I look up and down the street again. Nothing and nobody is coming near here for now.

I match the errant thought I'd heard from the driver of the SUV to this carnage. The driver had shot this woman and sped away seconds before I'd arrived in the street.

Her engine is still running. She'd been caught unawares.

I turn the engine off and drag her from the driver's seat.

Her blood coats my hands as I carry her into the open garage ahead of me. Her house is set out much like mine and I quickly navigate the hallway that leads to her kitchen. I lay her on the tiled floor and hit speed dial on my cell. Carlisle answers on the second ring.

I tell him what I'm seeing and describe her breathing, the gurgling and the pallor of her skin.

"It sounds fatal without surgical intervention," my father tells me. But I already know this for myself.

"I'm not asking you to tell me how to treat her," I shout at the device as I tear open her blouse with my nails rather than wasting time undoing buttons to gain access to her flesh.

"I don't understand," comes his confused reply.

"How many times do I bite her?" I shout as I kneel down beside her and take up her wrist.

"You're going to change her?" he shouts back. "Why? Do you know her?"

"Never seen her before," I tell him before I slice open her right wrist with my teeth.

"Why would you do this?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I shout back as I lick my teeth to get my venom moving. "How many bites?" I bellow before I take her wrist into my mouth and force the venom on my tongue into the wound.

I bite her twice more, once higher and once lower on the same wrist, before he answers. "A dozen, twenty times if you can. Get as much of your venom into her as you can. Quickly, before her skin hardens too much for you to force it in," he shouts to me.

I grunt but say nothing. I can't waste time speaking when that time could be better spent biting.

I bite her everywhere. Thighs. Throat. Ankles. Hips. The other side of her neck. I notice it becomes harder and harder to force the venom into her bloodstream with each successive bite and start to hope that I've done enough.

I bite at her waist but her body won't accept anymore of my venom. I sit back on my knees and watch as the bite mark disappears. Her flesh is creamy, white and unblemished within seconds.

"I can't get any more into her," I shout, hoping he's still on the line.

"Now we wait," he says simply.

"How long?" I ask as I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt.

"Smell her," he instructs and I bend over her and sniff at her collarbone.

"Venomous, acidic," I tell him as my system begins to calm a little.

"Are the bites healing?" he asks next.

All I can see are pale, silvery crescent shapes where my teeth had been. "The wounds are gone," I tell him as I watch the skin begin to plump on her thighs.

"Listen for her heartbeat."

"Flying," I tell him.

"Then it's done," he tells me in return.

I lower myself onto the tiles beside her and sigh. This made no sense at all. None. The compulsion to save her had been so strong I'd not given any thought to what I was going to do with her now.

"What the fuck have I done?" I wonder. I think it to myself but realise I've said it aloud when Carlisle chuckles.

"You've sired," he says simply.


	2. Chapter 2

She begins moaning a few minutes after I ring off from Carlisle.

I start to realise the enormity of my actions as I carry her to the back of her house and lay her down on her bed. She clutches at me, moaning steadily, begging me to not leave her alone.

I liked being alone. I liked answering to no one. I liked coming and going and taking nobody else's wants and needs into consideration.

And it slowly began to dawn on me that I had just given all that away. Deliberately.

She screams for me, though she doesn't even know my name, but I leave her there anyway.

I race through her home and gather cleaning products, rags and trash bags as I go. I dump them all in the garage and retrieve her vehicle. I park it and then close the door behind it, blocking its view from the street.

I take her keys and lock her front door behind me as I leave.

I hear her whimpering as I walk casually down the street back to my own home.

I check my mailbox, I gather my things from my car and then I go inside at a normal pace.

The instant the door closes behind me I begin to think about what I've done more thoroughly.

Life as I know it, if it could be called a life and not merely an existence, was over.

The peace I'd found here was likely never to be found again.

"Fuck!" I shout as I make my way to my bedroom.

I shed my blood stained clothes. Next I shower. I redress in my everyday attire.

I take my laptop, iPod and its dock, phone charger and a disposable phone from its box in my study and place them all in my work satchel.

I take a good wad of cash from my hiding spot inside the margarine container in my fridge and put that in my satchel too.

I rummage through the cabinets in my garage and take rolls of duct tape, a tarpaulin and a dozen black trash bags. I roll the tape into the bags and wrap that into the tarp.

I turn on the lights in the rooms that face the street. I close the drapes. I flick through my mail and throw it all in the trash bag in the kitchen.

I take the trash bag with me as I leave. As I throw the locks on my front door I wage a war inside my own head.

Stay or go.

I could run. Nobody would think less of me.

Certainly no human would ever know I had inserted myself into the mess down the street.

And really, was what was happening for that woman anything to do with me? Not a bit of it. I didn't even know her name. Until twenty minutes ago I couldn't have told you what she looked like. That she was beautiful was of no matter to me. I'd met dozens, hundreds and maybe even thousands of beautiful women in my time.

I didn't even have her mental voice catalogued in my head. I hadn't heard one as I'd approached. Not even a mind in pain for having been shot.

Her blood smelled wonderful. Of course it did. My own mind and body was designed to be attracted to it. The scent of any blood was a source of pleasure and longing to me. I was built that way.

My decision to change her had been an impulsive one. But I felt as though I'd had no choice. I hadn't been thinking straight. And yet no other option had entered my mind as I'd done it. I'd simply _had_ to do it.

But I had done it. I'd given her this terrible gift.

But I could still run.

"Fuck."

I let my eyes wander to my car where it still stood in my own driveway. I could simply get in it and leave everything behind. I'd done it before. Just drive away, don't look back, close out this life and begin another.

It was a simple process and one I'd perfected.

I looked down the other end of the street and could just see the glint of the glass from the shattered back window of her car and it seemed to call to me. And I, like the fool I began to believe I was, listened to the call.

"Fuck."

I range my hearing out around me. Everything and everyone is as they and it should be. Busy living their lives.

I deposit the trash by the curb, sling my satchel over my shoulder and tuck the tarp and its contents under my other arm.

I take what would look like a leisurely stroll towards number twenty seven. Each step I take brings the scent of the blood in her driveway to my nostrils. I should hold my breath. I should try and block its tempting aroma out. I should run for the fucking hills I think as I round her drive and head towards her front door.

She's still whimpering as I deposit my bag at the foot of her sofa.

She moans as I set up my iPod in its dock in her living room. I switch it all on and choose a heavy rock playlist. I turn the iPod and the dock up as high as it will go. The neighbours will think she's having a party rather than dying.

She starts to scream while I gather the cleaning products I'd left in her garage. She screams while I clean up the glass from her shattered windows and she screams as I bleach the blood from the concrete where her car had stood.

Nobody looks out their windows. Nobody sees me or cares that I'm cleaning someone else's driveway. Nobody can hear her screaming over the din of the music.

I go back into the house and through to the garage.

I take her purse, cell phone and iPod out of the car and put them aside. I take her registration papers and learn that she is Miss Isabella Swan and she is twenty six years old. I stash the papers with her other things and do my best not to roll her name around and around in my mouth as I clean up.

"Fuck."

It only takes a moment to locate the bullet shell. It's lodged in the dash but comes away easily as I dig it out with my nails. I pocket it before flinging what's left of the bottle of bleach inside her car. It instantly stains the seats and carpets but I don't care. I use one of her rags to swipe the bleach over the steering wheel and the dashboard. I wipe the door handle and its trim with the last dribble of it and then I throw the bottle and rags into the backseat of the car.

I go to her bedroom but ignore her thrashing as best I can while I strip her naked.

She's fucking gorgeous. Glorious. And her skin is beginning to pale and plump and radiate the power she'll have as a vampire.

"Fuck."

I shove her bloodied clothes into another bag and tape it shut.

I roll her from side to side and reef the bloodied sheets from underneath her. She screams throughout. Any pain or discomfort I inflict while I strip the bed is lost on her as she writhes through the agony of her change.

The sheets go into a bag of their own, getting the same tape treatment as the others.

I mop up the blood on her kitchen floor, retrace my steps to the garage and wipe away all the spatter there too. I wipe the splotches a second time on my way back to the kitchen. Those rags go into yet another bag that gets a good amount of tape on it when I'm done.

I take it all with me back to the garage. I throw all the bags into the backseat and slam the doors shut.

I spread the tarp over the back window of her car and tape it down with three layers of tape. I use one of the black plastic bags to do the same to her windshield and then I tape all the doors and windows on the car shut too.

With the last roll of tape I tape the internal door to her garage shut, locking the scent of her delicious blood in the garage with the bleach.

I fill her kettle and set it to boil and still she screams. Long, agonised screams as her body burns away her human blood. I look down in longing at her blood that clings to my hands. I want it. I want it inside me. But when the kettle is done I use the boiling water and her dish soap to wash all traces of it off my hands in her kitchen sink. I douse the steel with more boiling water and watch the last remnants of her delicious life spiral down the drain.

"Fuck. Why me?"

I fight the urge to lick it as the last of it slops around. It's a tough battle but I win it by holding my breath until it's all gone.

I locate her ensuite and set her shower to warm up before carrying her to the stall. She won't, or can't, stand on her own so I let her slip to the shower base and leave her sitting under the spray – screaming all the while – while I go to locate new sheets.

I find what she's got in a cupboard in her laundry room and make quick work of remaking her bed.

I rifle through her clothes and come up with some sweats and a plain t-shirt. Plain white cotton panties I locate in a drawer by her bed. I stare for a long moment at the neat pile of bras. Getting one off her had been fine, putting another one on her seemed far, far beyond my scope of experience so I leave them where they sit. I take all the rest to her bathroom with me and dump it on the counter.

She's whimpering when I open the door to get her from the shower. She looks like a bedraggled rat as I pull her from it and sit her on the closed lid of her toilet. I wipe her down as best I can but the bulk of the water in her hair is beyond my talents so I leave it.

I put the shirt over her head and let her lean on me while I pull first the panties on and then the sweats.

She begins to scream again as I lower her to the bed.

I pull closed her drapes, turn off the lights and close her bedroom door behind me as I leave.

She screams for me to stay with her but I shut her in there and head back to her living room anyway.

I've done what I can. Nothing I do or say will do any good now.

I rummage in her purse and take her phone, along with her laptop from the dining table into the living room and begin to shut down her life.

I crack open my laptop, insert a usb cable and connect it to hers. I take a mirror copy of her hard drive and then connect her cell to it. I take a copy of her contacts, all her notes and all the usernames and passwords on her apps and social media.

I put them into an encrypted email and send them to jasper.

Even without a heads up from me he replies to my email within the hour. He's cracked all her passwords, hacked all her accounts and shut them all down.

With that complete I put her laptop and cell back where I'd found them and then opened the program I used for my own work.

It's nine at night before her screams begin to change. She's not quite far enough into the change for her human body processes to have gained their vampiric nature yet so her throat is raw. She begins to sound like a wounded dog around eleven but by midnight her vocal chords have strengthened and her screams began to bother me. If they bother me it wouldn't be long before the neighbours begin to start complaining.

I quiet my iPod and retrieve her from her bed.

I scoop her up and take her over my shoulder through the back of her yard. I take her with me over the fence that separates our homes from the forest at the rear and then I run with her. I go five miles into the depths of the forest before I lose the last threads of human thought around us.

I go another mile just to be sure.

She screams the whole fucking way.

"Fuck."

I'm agitated beyond reason as I deposit her at the base of a fallen tree.

I run north, dodging trees as I open up my senses to the beasts that inhabit the area. I drain a large male deer and another smaller female before my thirst abates. It would never truly ever be gone, but after the second kill I felt full enough to make my way back to my screaming charge.

She is still lying on the forest floor when I got back to her. Writhing in complete, full body agony. Her scent had changed again in the half hour I'd been away from her. She now smelled more like my venom than her own blood and bodily fluids and I began to relax. She had been far too tempting before.

I left her there and walked in a mile wide circle as I connected with Carlisle then Jasper via my cell. Carlisle was intrigued by my choices that day, Jasper appalled by them.

I did not give one, solitary care for either of their opinions.

I simply gave them the basic information they sought. Yes I'd removed as much evidence as I could from her driveway. Yes I'd retrieved the bullet casing. Yes I'd taken her into the forest and away from human ears while she screamed through the quite hours of the night.

I give Jasper the address to her home and leave it to him to arrange to have her vehicle and its blood soaked contents removed. I give Carlisle her details so he can begin to trace her medical and family history using his contacts and access at his hospital post.

I decline to speak to Emmett when Carlisle asks if I will. I also decline to speak to the women in my family. Rosalie will be furious with me. Esme will swoon and Alice will impart whatever she'd seen in her visions and I am not ready to hear that yet.

Carlisle begs me to think very carefully about my actions. I tell him I am and I have. I've made my choice and I tell him I intend to live with it. He asks me to remain in range for contact, to call if I need anything and to let him know how she gets on over the coming days. And I lie and tell him that I will.

I know I won't. I want to take her away. I want to run away with her. I want to keep her all to myself. She's mine and I made her and I lie and tell him I'll report progress back soon.

"Fuck," I roar into the forest.

I circle back to where I'd left my thrashing charge. I sit by her until ten the next morning, her screaming all the while, and once I am fairly sure that most of the inhabitants of our street are busily involved in their daily routines I carry her back to her house. Over the fence and back into her bedroom. Back into her bed where she continues to scream.

I restart the rock music on my iPod, reopen my laptop and get back to work.

Nothing I said or did for her was going to be of any comfort. So I leave her to scream.


	3. Chapter 3

Day two of her torment is a busy one for me.

She's busy screaming while I'm busy ransacking her house. I open every drawer, every cupboard, every file folder and every container in her pantry.

In each room I learn a something about her.

She eats a lot of salad. She owns a set of Mickey Mouse ears with her name on them. She's on birth control pills but there's no evidence of her having a boyfriend or lover regularly in the house. I find a small vibrator and pack of spare batteries in the same drawer as her underwear.

She's very clean and owns an extraordinary amount of disinfectant. She uses strawberry scented shampoo and double bags her trash. There is mace in her purse and another canister in her medicine cabinet.

Her post consists of offers of savings and reminders that her student loans are due soon.

I begin to see patterns as I rummage. Almost every room in the small house has first aid suppliers. A small kit in a side table drawer by the front door. A larger kit under the kitchen sink and a crate of it in the main bathroom. Bandages, alcohol swabs, tweezers. Hundreds of them all in little sealed bags. There is a fire extinguisher by the back door and a fire blanket by the stove. There are three, yes three, smoke alarms in the house.

She was either extremely nervous living on her own or she was extremely accident prone. I didn't know which until Carlisle emailed me a simplified version of her medical records. All I could do was be thankful that she'd chosen a single storey house here. Otherwise she'd have been in danger of breaking her neck down the stairs.

I also learned that she's a writer. She's lived in this street for exactly nine days. She moved here from Arizona to take a job with a small publishing firm, transferring from an even smaller publishing firm.

I call her boss from the number on a business card stapled to the top of her resume and explain that due to a family emergency Miss Swan would not be returning to work. He is apoplectic to put it mildly. He rages about her being so irresponsible and how he was being left in the lurch when he'd only just hired her. I tell him to fuck off and hang up.

Her emails tell me that she's got no friends locally, a few from Arizona from college and she's not exactly a social butterfly.

In the spare bedroom I find boxes of file folders. There are nine boxes piled on top of one another that almost reach the ceiling. They are taped shut and all bear the same markings. Police Only – Chief Charles Swan. A relative of hers obviously but why she had his files I didn't know.

A mystery for another day I tell myself as the clock nears midnight again. I turn off my iPod, turn on the lights and head back to her bedroom.

"Who the fuck gets shot in their driveway after living somewhere for just nine days?" I ask her as I scoop her up into my arms for the trek into the forest. Her answer is just a scream. An ordinary, guttural scream.

I lay her at the base of the same fallen tree and listen hard to the sounds around us. There isn't a human scent, sound or thought for miles so I leave her and hunt. Just the one small deer as I'd gotten over the desire for human blood since her house now smelled of bleach and my venom.

I decline yet another call from Carlisle on my phone as I trot back to where she lays.

She's not screaming, for a change, and has settled for a mild whimper and I find it quite nice to just sit by her for a little while. When she begins to ramp up again, and her foot connects with my hip as she kicks out, I decide to shift a little further away.

I fill the time reading over her medical files again. So many injuries in such a short life. Bike falls, trampoline fractures, head injuries from tripping. How she survived this long is beyond me I think as I read.

Carlisle calls again and again I decline the call. He resorts to text messages and when they go unanswered he switches to Facebook messages. I switch off my phone and put it back in my pocket.

I am strangely content just sitting in the forest with her while she screams.

Of course all the animals have fled. My scent and her high pitched caterwauling make them scatter pretty quickly. But within myself I am comfortable just sitting there listening to her rapid heartbeat between wails.

It's really flying now. Had she still been a little bit human it would've given out. But her scent is almost one hundred percent vampire now so I know that no harm was going befall her when her heart actually did give out once and for all.

It wouldn't be long.

I remembered listening to first Rosalie's and then Esme's hearts as they neared the end of their changes. They too screamed endlessly. Emmett took just as long but screamed slightly less. They all writhed in agony. Their organs gave up after three days but I hoped this wouldn't take that long.

I heard the first sputter of her hearts feeble attempt to maintain its humanity at four o'clock that morning. A brief hiccough, fifteen minutes between the stutters at first.

I heard it again at midday, hours after I'd taken her back to her home and back to her bed. This time it lasts a few beats longer. I knew then. She'd wake very soon.

I didn't have long to put things into place. I couldn't travel with her while she screamed so I was thankful that her change was going to be a normal one, by the feel of it. Just the standard three days. So while she screamed I worked. Both in her home and in mine.

I ignore all attempts by my family to contact me. I knew them very well and after more than fifty years of existence as their son and brother I knew how they were going to proceed. They were far enough away not to physically appear for another twenty four hours at least and for once my isolation was a positive. I figured I had a minimum of twenty hours before the first of them, and I was betting that it would be Alice, would show up on my doorstep. Or Isabella's.

That wasn't going to happen. Not if I could avoid it anyway.

To make sure we got away cleanly we'd be gone within that twenty. If any of them managed to get here any faster than that I'd deal with it then. Somehow.

I closed out my home first. There wasn't much to do and it didn't take long. I cancelled accounts for utilities, resigned from my job, arranged for someone to take care of the lawns and paid five years of property taxes up front. I redirected my mail and transferred money out of my everyday account and stashed it in accounts in other countries.

I packed what I thought I'd need and stashed the single bag in the trunk of my car. Then I drove it back to number twenty seven and began to pack for her. I didn't take much. A few changes of clothes and her purse. A few sparse toiletries went into the bag along with a few human trinkets I thought looked important to her because of their prominence in her home. A silver picture frame, the contents of her meagre jewellery case, a file folder marked 'important documents' from her desk that contained her true birth certificate, things like that. Everything else would wait for her return. One day she'd be back. We all went back. Eventually.

I did the same at her home as I did at mine. I closed all her utility accounts, paid her property taxes and redirected her mail. I tossed the contents of her fridge and pantry out to the curb and cleaned every trace of her from every surface.

Jasper would take care of her vehicle when he arrived and as I looked at my watch just before midnight I could imagine that would be soon.

I quieted my iPod and took her back into the forest. She screamed while I hunted. She screamed while I read my texts and deleted them one after another. They were all only from Carlisle now and I figured it was he who had volunteered to stay behind while the others made their way towards me. Probably to reason with me. More likely to plead with me to share her.

Wasn't quite going to happen that way.

So as she lay on the forest floor and screamed I sent the one and only message to Carlisle that I intended for quite some time. It was simple and to the point. ' _You won't find us. Please don't waste the effort. We'll come to you when we're ready. My love to the family, Edward.'_

His reply was immediate and pleading. I crushed the phone under my shoe and scattered the pieces in the underbrush. The burner phone would suffice until Jasper managed to trace me on that and by then I'd have another, and then another.

We sat in the forest until well passed midday that third day. I was content to just sit. She was hardly content to lie there screaming but she really had no choice.

Her body was giving in, rapidly now.

Her blood had been burned away steadily over the last few days and now her organs were giving in too.

I took her back to her home at four and by the time the humans around us were sitting down to their evening meal that third day her heart rate had skyrocketed and the giant muscle was futilely trying to fight my venom with everything it had left. Twenty minutes later it stopped for a full minute before kicking back in.

I stayed close to her then. Right on the bed with her. My ear to her chest. Listening for the time when it would give out completely.

At eight that night it did. One last cough. One last splutter. One last beat and then it stopped. It didn't restart. She still screamed. But that wasn't to last either.

I retreated to the far corner of her bedroom and slipped into a crouch. They sometimes come up swinging and I'm not interested in having my balls kicked in or a limb ripped off by getting too close too fast.

She screamed her last scream at eight eighteen on the eighteenth. Poetic really.

She opened her eyes two minutes later.

She lunged for me ten seconds after that.

"What the fuck did you do to me, you bastard?" were the first words she ever spoke to me.

Not so poetic.

"I saved your life," I tell her simply, palms up to show I'm not a threat.

She tilts her head and stares at me for a long moment. I smile at her. She hisses and bares her teeth at me. I am offended. I try to make nice again. "You'd been shot. Do you remember that?" she stares for the longest time at me and then nods. "So I saved your life," I tell her with another smile.

"I've been burning alive forever!" she shouts.

"Barely three days," I scoff, but this seems to enrage her even more.

"What the fuck did you do to me, you bastard?" she shouts at me, again.

"I saved your life. We've covered that already."

Her hiss this time is followed by a deep, throaty growl as she rolls her shoulders and slips into an instinctual crouch. "One more time, pretty boy."

I huff. In hindsight it might not have been the correct thing to do. I was preparing to dumb the situation down for her when she pounced. I didn't see it coming. No time to dodge. I didn't even hear her think about doing it first.

We land with a thud and then a crash as her ensuite door splinters.

Luckily for me she had no idea what she was capable of, or how to attack me, so I push her off me and get back to my feet. "Ungrateful," I sigh as I right my clothing and retreat to the other side of the room. "And why can't I hear your thoughts?" I ask as she too gets to her feet. "Have you suffered a brain injury that isn't in your medical history?"

She tugs the hem of her shirt until it's once again straight and then she looks at me through squinted eyes. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I can't hear you. I thought it might be because you'd suffered a traumatic brain injury that wasn't noted on your records," I say as calmly as I can. She seems very volatile. She also seems a little dim witted.

"Hey dickhead!" she screeches. For no reason. Rather unkindly, I thought.

"That's not nice," I chastise.

"You _can_ hear me," she hisses as she moves into the centre of the room.

"Of course I can _hear_ you," I scoff. "I just can't hear you in my head."

She stares at me for a long moment, shakes her head minutely as if to clear it, and then she grins. "You're fucking odd," she announces. She shakes her head again and I wonder what's going on inside it. "Why does my voice sound so..." she trails off.

"You're changed," I tell her simply.

"I realise that," she barks. "And why can I hear _everything?_ "

"You're changed," I tell her again. I thought it was a simple enough concept. Perhaps I'd made a huge mistake turning her? She might have been a simpleton and the venom in her system may not have been able to heal that.

"Again, I realise that," she hisses as she turns and heads towards her bathroom. "Oh my fucking god!" she bellows as she takes her first look at herself in the mirror.

I think, and I believe it was a simple enough conclusion to come to, that her bright red eyes had startled her. So I begin to explain, "They'll change soon. A few weeks. It won't last, I promise," I tell her as I go towards the shattered bathroom door myself.

"They'll change?" she asks in a whisper, the first truly quiet, almost gentle thing she'd said since rising.

"They will," I assure her as I poke my head around the door. "Fucking hell, woman! What are you doing?" I screech as I see her. She's standing in front of the mirror, t-shirt raked up under her chin, a breast in each hand.

"I don't want them to change. They're perfect," she murmurs as she turns right then left.

I put a hand over my eyes, mostly, "I thought you were talking about your eyes. Your eye colour will change. A few weeks if you stick to the diet," I tell her.

"Oh," is all she says. I'm still _mostly_ covering my eyes so I see when she drops her breasts, replaces her t-shirt and stares at her face in the mirror. "They're kind of weird," she says, probably more to herself than to me. I let my hand fall and stand behind her as she stares at herself. "Will they go your colour?" she asks, looking at me in the mirror.

"They will," I assure. "A few weeks."

She leans forwards and really stares at herself. I wonder what she's thinking. That was still bothering me, not being able to mentally hear her.

"My skin is so clear," she whispers, again turning left and right to stare. "And pale. Not a mark," she adds before turning to face me. "Did your dick get bigger?" she asks, shocking the hell out of me.

I stumble backwards, back into her bedroom, and try and wrap my head around the question. I want to look down at my crotch to see if I'm sporting wood, but I fight the urge. "Definitely not," I hiss.

"I figured if my boobs got bigger your dick might have," she mumbles as she continues to stare at herself.

I make the correlation between the two now. I'm embarrassed, thinking she meant _now,_ not immediately after my change. She wasn't totally wrong I think to myself as I take a split second to palm myself. A little bit of wood.

She comes out from the bathroom and cocks her head to one side as she studies me. "What are you?" she asks simply.

I grin. I'm a lot of things. "What do you think I am? And by the way, you're one too now." She studies me for another moment. She swallows thickly and I recognise that for what it is. "You're thirsty."

"It burns," she all but moans.

"I can teach you how to tone that down," I say, pointing towards her throat that she's now gripping with her hand. "I can teach you how to manage it."

"What are you?" she asks again.

"Vampire," I tell her plainly. No need for niceties now. She's already called me a bastard and a dickhead, and it's not like she's not allowed to know I'm a vampire as well as those things.

Her only reply is a soft 'huh' before she scrunches up her brows and swallows deeply again.

"I'll teach you," I assure her as I make my way to the doors that lead out into her yard. "Put something on your feet so you don't stand out to any human who sees us leave and we'll run a bit. You'll like it. We all like to run."

She thinks on it a moment and then dashes down the hallway. She's back in a few seconds, flip flops on her feet, with a wide grin on her face. "I'm fast," she says as though surprised.

"You are," I agree as I hold the door open for her. "You're also lethal to humans. I need you to keep that in mind as we run. We'll go away from here and into the forest, but its a few miles before the scent of them dissipates."

She joins me in the yard and takes a long sniff. Her hand flies to her throat again as she smells our neighbours. Even inside their homes they smell wonderful. She turns frightened eyes to me, probably seeking assurance. "It burns," she moans again.

I huff. I'd just explained this to her. As a vampire she should be able to hear and retain information and recall it at will. I was becoming concerned that she was mentally challenged. I grab her hand and tug her along behind me as we jog to her fence. I leap it and stand waiting for her on the other side. When she doesn't immediately follow I huff again and tell her to get a move on. She comes over the fence and lands at my feet with a dull thud.

She has her hands on her hips when she returns to a full standing position. I have no idea what her problem is so ignore the gesture. "Go due north, that's the fastest way to leave the human scents behind us," I tell her as I begin to run.

"What way is due north?" she asks as she catches up to me.

"This way, obviously," I tell her as we run. If she's right beside me, and I've told her we're going due north, then obviously due north is the direction we are going. And I'm the dickhead here?

She streaks ahead because she is faster than me as a newborn. I shout at her to stay close to me but she doesn't listen. This will not do. I whistle, she continues to run. I growl, on she runs. I break off a low lying branch as I give chase and throw it at her, hitting her square in the back of her head. Then she stops. Finally.

"What the fuck was that for?" she hisses as she turns to me.

"You weren't listening to me," I shrug.

"You're not the boss of me," she growls.

I want to tell her that for right now I am, but I keep my mouth shut because she's got her hand to her throat again. "What do you hear?" I ask her, creating a distraction from her anger. Her head whips to her right in the direction of the herd of deer I knew to be there. She says nothing but does lick her lips in hunger. "Sniff," I tell her and wait until she has. I see the silver sheen of her venom on her bottom lip and cannot help the shiver that overtakes me. I put the sight of her out of mind and concentrate on the lesson at hand. "Stay downwind of them. They spook easily, especially for us. Crouch low, pounce quickly once you've chosen one. The others will scatter so pick a big one as you're so thirsty."

I haven't even finished giving her the instructions before she's off, bounding across the forest floor. She's quite stealthy for a newborn, quite in control. Utterly magnificent actually, I concede. She pounces on the largest of the herd and she's got it on the ground, her lips pressed to its neck before I take up position up a tree to watch.

She drains it in minutes and stands looking down at it for a long time after its heart has stopped beating. For the hundredth time since she'd risen I wonder what she's thinking.

"Do I leave it here?" she asks, directing her enquiry exactly in my direction though I doubted she'd given much mind to where I'd gone once she'd begun to stalk her prey. This was instinctual. She might not know that about herself yet, but she'd be able to find me anywhere now she'd scented me.

"Predators will take care of it," I tell her from my perch.

"I still burn," she says as she whips her head from right to left, probably trying to locate her next meal.

"Find another," I tell her as I jump out of the tree.

I hear the rest of the herd to the west and she does too. She takes off, flying through the trees, and I give chase. She's got a female on the ground and she's feeding well before I take another perch. "Listen for what's out here as you feed," I instruct. "Humans won't exactly sneak up on you, you'll hear and smell them long before they hear or see you, but blood lust is a problem when we're hunting," I tell her.

She stands and wipes her lips once the animal is spent and then she trots to the base of my tree. "Can I fly?" she asks, looking up at me. My bark of laughter must answer her question. "Will the sun burn me dead?" comes next, again I laugh. "Coffins?" more laughter. "Garlic?"

I jump from my branch and land right in front of her. "None of the above. You have no natural predators to worry about. Even the humans aren't a problem because they refuse to believe you exist," I tell her as I nod in the direction I want her to walk. "Sunlight won't harm you, but your skin will look like diamond shards in the sun, so it's best to avoid being out in it with humans around. They are incredibly ignorant, but if they see or hear too much they do ask endless questions."

"And garlic?" she asks.

"Ridiculous," I mumble. "Nothing can hurt you," I tell her. "Unless someone pulls your head off. And that won't technically hurt, but it will kill you. As in actually dead this time."

Her soft 'huh' is the only sound as we walk.

"I got shot," she says after about twenty minutes. It's not a question. Just a statement, so I treat it as such.

"Yes."

"You bit me."

"Yes."

"Why?" she asks.

I don't think I can answer that. She's too new. She won't understand. So I give her an answer that as a human she would've understood easily. "You were dying. I did what I could to save you."

"Is that how this is done then? You bite and then they change?"

"Yes. In its simplest form yes."

"Who are you?" she asks, startling me.

I think on what to tell her. I'm so many things, and known as so many people. In the end I decide to tell her who I want her to know me as. "I'm Edward."

"I'm Bella," she whispers as we come to her fence again.

"Hold your breath," I counsel as she reaches for her throat again. "They'll smell good to you always, but you must learn not to react," I tell her as we leap over the fence into her yard.

"It'll never go away?" she asks as we go in through her bedroom door.

"Not ever," I tell her sadly, for it was sad that she was now going to have to battle her desire for them forever more.

She stands in the middle of her bedroom and thinks on that for a second. And then she throws a punch that would've been a killing blow had I still been human. Unused to not hearing the intention I take it square on the chin. I reel backwards, stumble against the edge of her bed and end up on my ass on the carpet.

She follows, stands over me, her luscious lips dripping venom as she stares down at me. "That's for saying I had a brain injury."


	4. Chapter 4

To say she was belligerent would be the largest possible understatement in the entirety of human history. Endless questions. Endless accusations. Endless bitching and endless mood swings. We'd been arguing about having to leave for three hours and my patience – and our good fortune that my family were yet to arrive – was running out.

She didn't want to leave her home. I didn't give her a choice and instructed her to go to my car. She stood her ground. We argued some more.

In the end, just before the sun came up, I frog marched her to the front door and shoved her out of it. She let me so I knew she realised the wisdom in my reasoning. But she wasn't going to give in it that easily.

A fact I realised when she stood in her driveway hands on hips beside my car and outright refused to get into the passenger seat.

"Alright," I growl as I move towards her. "If you think you can handle _that_ on your own you're welcome to try, but I'm leaving," I tell her firmly as I throw my head in the direction of number nineteen where Stuart is sleepily wandering towards his car to head to work.

His scent hits me full force half a second before it hits her and I see her noticeably stiffen. I have her penned in between the open passenger door and myself, but with her newborn strength she had half a chance to get by me. But she won't. I can tell she won't because had she still be able to shed tears she would've right then as the magnitude of what I'd been trying to explain to her for _hours_ became the truth for her.

She is a predator now and her natural prey are humans.

She tune sad, crimson eyes to me and nods minutely before climbing into my car.

I shut the door behind her and slide into the driver's seat. She reaches for her seatbelt and I chuckle a little as I slam the car into reverse and tear out of her driveway. By the time we reach the same corner where the SUV had barrelled past me a few days earlier she is gripping the dash with her nails – denting my lovely Volvo horridly – and swearing at me to slow the fuck down.

"No need," I tell her as I slide the car around the next corner too.

She is quiet for hours and I am grateful. I want to talk to her, to learn about her, but she isn't ready. She hadn't had enough time to embrace what she was now, or what had led her to needing to be changed into what she was now. That would come. The questions and the recriminations. I was ready for that when the time came.

For now we drive in silence while she stares out her window at the passing scenery.

We wouldn't ever need to stop for food or to relieve ourselves as humans would, but we did need to stop for fuel. I warn her I am going stop in the next town so she's prepared for the human scents when I open my door and she does nod that she understands me, but says nothing.

No matter. I like the silence.

It is refreshing.

I'd spent fifty years listening to the women in my life chatter. Her silence was a nice change for me.

I'd never be able to escape the thoughts of those around me, but with her – with or without her brain injury which was yet to be proved or denied sufficiently – I thought I might find a little peace.

I filled the car, paid for the fuel and on we drove. Four hours later I repeat the process. And still she is silent. I am really enjoying myself!

When she puts her hand to her throat I venture off the main highway and take smaller roads until we are once again surrounded by forest. I hadn't seen another car for a good half hour so pull mine to the shoulder of the track and tell her to wait for me before she ran off.

As was becoming the norm she ignores me and is off and running before I'd even closed my door.

I take off behind her and follow her strengthening scent as she dodges and weaves her way through the thick trees.

I find her with her meal well in hand a few minutes later and get up into a tree to watch. This time she keeps her eyes on me as she feeds. I don't know if she is seeing me as a threat to her kill but I didn't want to take the chance to find out. Many a vampire had been ended by a newborn for seeming to be coveting a kill. I stay right where I am, my eyes locked to hers, as she drinks.

She wipes her mouth when she is done and sits beside the creature with a thud. I jump from my perch and move towards her carefully. I sit down beside her and wait for her to speak. I think she will now.

"Can I ever go back again?" she asks quietly.

I don't quite know to where she is referring so I tell her the simple answer. "One day yes. When your thirst is well under control."

"Can I go back to work?"

"One day."

"Can I get married?" she asks, startling me but I don't get the chance to ask what she's asking for when the next round of questions begins. "Is it legal for me to get married now? Can a vampire marry a human? Can I have kids? Can I adopt? Can I pee? Why aren't I tired? How long until I can go out on my own?"

It's a hell of a list. Some of it I don't want to even think about, so I address the questions pertaining to her new nature only. "It's not that you can't pee, you just don't need to anymore. So you won't. You won't ever need to sleep again. We don't tire. Ever. And you can go out on your own once I'm sure you're no threat to humans."

I try to put out of mind the part about marriage. Its true I hadn't seen any evidence of a boyfriend or lover, but having only just moved to the area perhaps she wasn't through decorating and hadn't put those things on view yet. I began to worry. Maybe I'd just taken her away from someone who loved her and whom she loved in return.

"Is someone going to be looking for you?" I ask hesitantly. She shakes her head and to me it seems sadly. "A boyfriend, lover? A casual date?" I ask cautiously but she's still shaking her head. I feel ridiculously relieved.

Jasper had sent me all the information he could find about her so I knew that she had family, but nobody close like a sibling or parent. They were all gone. There were cousins and an aunt or two, but nobody that I thought was close enough to mount a search party.

"Where are we going?" she asks, finally, after long moments of silence.

"I have a place in mind, but I'm open to suggestion," I tell her as I get to my feet.

She comes to hers too but shakes her head. "I guess it doesn't matter where I end up anymore."

"Where would you like to go? If you could just go anywhere, anywhere at all on a whim. Where would you head?" I ask as we begin to walk back towards the car.

"I don't have any money," she whispers, but I hear her and grin to myself.

"I didn't ask where you'd go if you could afford it. I just want to know where your first choice would be."

She doesn't answer and as we get to the car she enters the passenger side without comment. I let it go. She has a lot going on in her head. Decisions were hard to make at the start. I remembered that from when I'd been changed myself. Sensory overload it was called.

I drive us back out to the main road and rejoin the highway, all the while we sit in silence. But for the thoughts of humans coming in the other direction it was once again peaceful.

Out of the blue she says one word and a fluttering in my chest rises inside me that I hadn't felt in a very, very long time. Intrigue. I feel intrigued that she's said this word. Forks. She says Forks.

To anyone else it might have seemed as though she was speaking of the utensil but to me I knew exactly what she meant. And where she meant. Forks Washington. I knew it well.

"Any particular reason?" I ask as I turn the car around and head back in the direction we'd come.

"I was shot," she says simply.

"And that is related to Forks somehow?" I ask as I take the exit that will take us west.

"Oh yeah," she hisses before turning to face me in her seat. "I think the motherfucker who shot me or paid to have me shot is from Forks."

I grin then. It turns to a full on smile within seconds. She's utterly ruthless. She's vengeful. She's a handful and she's confusing but she's fucking perfect. "Motherfuckers do need to learn their place," I chuckle as I put my foot to the floor.

Whilst I was up for a spot of vengeance, and if truthful up for anything this woman cared to name, I did have some concerns about setting foot in Forks once again. We'd lived there as a family forty odd years ago and although we hadn't been back there might be one or two humans left there that might recognise me. After all I hadn't changed even a little bit since last being there. Physically anyway.

Mentally possibly.

"Do you know who this motherfucker is already?" I ask as I speed through another bend.

"No clue," she laughs. "But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that if I want to find out I have to go to Forks," she says, shedding her shoes and propping her feet on my dash.

I scowl at her, she grins sweetly at me and I return my eyes to the road. She isn't at all what I expected her to be. "Tell me why you think that way."

"My father was the Chief of Police in Forks for twenty years. He was killed eight months ago. In Forks. On duty. It had all the hallmarks of a professional hit but I was told it was an accident. I think that's bullshit and after reading some of his case notes I think I'm sure its bullshit."

"Was he investigating something?" I ask, my interest now fully piqued.

"He was always investigating something," she replies quickly. "But he never stepped outside his jurisdiction so whatever happened to him had to have been done by someone in Forks. I want to know who that is."

I look to her and see the grin on her face. It's predatory. It's unnerving. It's fucking gorgeous.

"Then we'll head to Forks and find out," I say simply.

"Why?" she asks.

It's an interesting question. I'm not fully sure why, but I'm not fully sure why not either. "I'm up for the hunt," I tell her with a shrug.

She thinks on it and then turns to me a little more. "But you said we couldn't stay where we were because I was a danger to the humans around me. Now you're condoning going to hunt one down. I don't get it."

"You _are_ a danger to the humans around us. But back there," I say, throwing a look over my shoulder in the direction we'd come from, "those humans are decent. They were nice people. They never hurt anyone, they just went about their lives.

"There are a lot out there who aren't so nice. I have no problem eradicating a few of those."

"You're very odd," she states matter of factly, and not for the first time.

"I prefer enigma," I chuckle as I change lanes and curse at the idiot human doing half the speed limit.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," I tell her.

"Who's going to come looking for you?"

The question takes me by surprise. "I never said anyone would."

"You were eager to leave, and I know you said it's because I'm a threat, but we could've stayed a little longer in my house. Or yours. We could've just hunted in our own forest for a little while."

It's a good argument and she's thought it through. No point lying so I don't. "My family, for want of a better description, would have come. They are probably already there now."

"You don't want to see them?"She asks.

"Not right now, no." I tell her honestly, though I don't explain why.

She thinks on it a moment. "Are they dangerous to me?"

"Not at all," I chuckle. "They are the least threatening of all the vampires I know. Very peaceful. Very peaceable. Very normal."

"Then why did we run? Would they not approve of me?"

Cards on the table time I think to myself as I pull off the main highway onto yet another dirt track to take us into the neighbouring forest. I talk as I navigate.

"It's nothing to do with you, I promise," I tell her. "And they'd love you. All of them would love you on sight."

"So why run then? Am I dangerous to them for some reason?"

"No. You aren't. It's complicated."

"I think I can keep up. My brain feels huge," she laughs.

"It's no bigger," I assure her with a smile. "It just feels like it is because now you're using all of it."

"Stop hedging," she warns and I take it on face value. She has a right to know why we ran.

"It's your blood, or the human blood you used to have," I tell her straight up. "It's your blood and my possessiveness that's the problem. There's a little understood phenomenon amongst our kind. There are some humans who are irresistible to us. Individually though. Not as a species, or subspecies. Particular humans smell particularly good to us individually. You did to me.

"I smelled your blood and couldn't help it. I wanted it. I wanted you. It's a compulsion. Your blood called to me. Sang for me. Just for me. And I was powerless to do anything other than try to save you."

"And because my blood was calling to you your family will not like that?" she asks, her eyebrows raised in confusion.

"I told you it was complicated," I sigh. "You're my singer. As in your blood sings for me. That's incredibly rare. I've heard of it but never witnessed it. Never."

"Are you my singer too?" she asks.

"No idea," I tell her honestly. "I don't know enough about it to know whether both parties need to be the others singer. I just know that you're mine. My singer I mean."

"This compulsion you felt, do you still feel it now that I'm not bleeding anymore?"

"You'll never bleed again," I remind her, "And yes. I still feel it. I always will."

"Weird," she sniggers and I wonder which part she finds weird. "Would your family think I tricked you or something? Is that it?"

"No," I laugh. "You'd be hard pressed to trick me," I tell her, tapping my temple. She stares at me blankly and it takes me a moment to realise she has no idea why I did that. I'd always done it. "I can hear thoughts," I tell her by way of explanation. "All thoughts. Until now. Until you. Yours I can't hear."

"That's fucking weird too," she snorts.

"You're telling me," I agree.

"Tangents," she whispers and I laugh. She'll do this a lot in the first months, go off track during discussions. "Explain to me exactly why you don't want me near your family."

"I never said I didn't want you near them," I huff. "My family would be ecstatic to learn I'd found my singer. Truly they would. They'd be so happy for me, and for you. Well maybe not Rosalie, but she's difficult at any time."

"So apart from Rosalie, whoever that is, they'd be happy you found me and saved me?" she asks. When I nod she shakes her head. "Then I don't get it. They'd be happy but you would not."

"I'd have to share you," I hiss. "They'd smother you. Us. They'd take you away from me for long hours, probably days, while they got to know you. My sisters and mother would drag you off and play dress ups with you. They'd want to shop with you and for you and they'd want to make you over. They'd have you redecorating our rooms and choosing china patterns," I hiss again, a little more loudly now that I'd hit my stride within my rant. "My brothers would rag on me constantly about having finally found someone and my father would wear an idiotic, satisfied grin for months.

"They'd invite the cousins to come meet you and you'd be taken from me again so that you could be shown off to them. They'd learn all about you before I had a chance to learn about you for myself."

"So, you're possessive," she says with a grin in answer to my rant.

"We all are," I point out.

"We'll see," she counters and I wonder what she's thinking for the millionth time. "I don't do dress ups and I don't think we need china, do we?" she laughs.

It breaks the tension I'm feeling and I laugh too. Just a little. She's glossed over the heavy, emotional parts of my rant and I'm grateful. "I guess we will."

I leave it at that and leave her to digest what I'd said and concentrated on getting my beloved car through the dirt track safely. We'd survive any crash without a scratch, but the Volvo wouldn't.

"Would I have died if you hadn't bitten me?" she asks out of nowhere.

"Definitely," I tell her sadly.

She's quiet for a long time then. I pull over once I'm sure we're far enough away from the last human thought I'd heard while driving. Once again she's out the door and running before I've had a chance to ask her to stay near me.

I shake my head as I begin the chase. Her scent is easy to follow and I admit I'm not really concerned that she'll come to any harm as she hunts. But I do admit to myself that I'd be pissed if I missed it. She fascinated me.

When I spot her I also admit to myself that she made me crazy. I felt like a teenager again. A stupid, hormone crazed teenager who got erections at inappropriate times.

And I hadn't had that happen in over a hundred years. Not since before I was turned at seventeen years old. But she did it. She made me ache in places I knew I could ache but had never experienced.

I climb the tree and watch her as she watches me. Our eyes never waiver as she drinks. She isn't growling, just watching me watch her. When she's done she wipes her mouth, throws me a smile and waits for me at the foot of the tree.

"Had enough?" I ask and she nods.

"Why don't you hunt?" she asks as we walk back to the car.

"I do. I did a lot while you were changing. But I don't need as much as you do right now. I go every few days."

"How long till I can go that long?"

"A few months, maybe a year," I tell her as we get back inside the car.

"Why do you get up a tree?"

What to tell her? That she's most dangerous to me while she's feeding, or that I get an uncomfortable hard on watching her feed? "It's safer," I chicken out.

"Bullshit," she laughs.

I run a hand through my hair and groan. "Why do you think I get up a tree while you feed?"

She cocks her head to the side before answering. "I don't know for sure. The first time I thought you were standing guard but the more you tell me about what I am now I think that might not be totally true.

"I can hear or smell anything approaching so I don't think I need you to guard."

"Alright," I say with a grin. "So it's not to guard you. What other theories do you have?" I chuckle as I take the correct exit that puts us on a straight path to Forks.

"The second time I thought it might be because you wanted me to learn for myself how to do it. But I think I did it right the first time."

"You did. It's instinctual. There's very little I can teach you about it. You're right," I tell her as I slow down as we approach a town. "Next theory."

"I've thought you might want to share but that seems unlikely."

"Correct," I tell her truthfully. "We can share later on, but not yet. Anymore?"

"A couple," she laughs. "Your smell changes while I'm feeding. Does mine?" she asks.

The question takes me by complete surprise. I grip the wheel tighter and count to ten before answering. "It does," I tell her eventually.

"It makes me horny. I thought it might make you horny too," she announces simply.

I swerve to the left and almost hit an oncoming car. "Fuck!" I shout as I correct the steering.

"Take it easy. It's just a question. It's okay if it doesn't," she laughs.

"I never said it doesn't," I tell her as I bring the car to a mere crawl on the outskirts of Forks. "A discussion for another time," I tell her while pointing to the marker ahead that tells me Forks is just ten miles ahead. "I have to tell you some things about this place before we get there.

"I lived here once. With my family. Forty years ago give or take. There might be some humans still alive here who remember me, or the name I went by back then. We need a good explanation for that when they ask. And they will. They always ask," I sigh.

"What was your name then?"

"Edward Cullen."

"And now?"

"Edward Masen at the moment."

"Any reason you can't be Masen here right now?" she asks.

"My family will probably be looking for me by that name so it's probably not a good idea. I'll revert to Cullen while we're here. It's been decades since I was last a Cullen anyway. It'll help to explain why I look exactly like the Edward Cullen they remember. I'll be his grandson."

"Who will I be?" she asks as we start to come into familiar surroundings.

"Anyone you want. Will anyone know you here? If your father was Chief of Police here how much time did you spend here?"

"Not a lot. Mostly a couple of weeks in the summer. Sometimes a few days in winter. Is there any harm in me being exactly who I am right now?"

"Not that I can foresee," I tell her as I take the turn off to my residence.

"Who are we to each other?" she asks and I baulk. My hesitation must be noticeable because she continues for me. "I mean, your grandfather lived here once and my father did up until recently. If anyone recognises either of us we better have a story ready for why we're here together. Pretty big coincidence otherwise."

"Simple reasoning is often the best when dealing with gossipy humans," I tell her. "They thrive on it so it's best not to make it too complicated. We'll say we met in Seattle and found we had Forks in common. Me because of my grandfather's fondness for the place, you because of your dad."

"How long have we been dating?" she giggles.

It's the first girly sound she's made in my presence and it makes her seem much younger than her actual years. It's quite wonderful. "A few months. That way any awkwardness between us will seem right in the humans eyes."

"Are we awkward?" she asks and I can hear the cheekiness in her voice as she does. "After all, you've seen me naked. You've had your lips all over my body. Technically we've been in the shower together. I've seen the size of your erection through your jeans and you've seen my tits. We're pretty comfortable wouldn't you say?" she laughs.

I cough and jerk the wheel to the left again. "Fuck," I shout as I come to a skidding halt in the driveway of my house and throw the car into park. "You can't just say shit like that to me," I hiss as I put my forehead to the wheel and close my eyes.

Her scent has bloomed in the confines of the car. She's aroused and I can smell it. She's been licking her lips and wetting them with her venom for the last twenty miles and I'm at the end of my tolerance.

When her fingers touch my forearm I jump. The sting of the contact takes my breath away. "I'm only teasing," she whispers. "If we're going to pull this off and blend in we need to be comfortable with each other. Is nudity an issue for you?" she asks seriously.

I bark out a laugh then. I can't help it. "It's not an issue for me," I tell her. "And just so you know, watching you feed does make me horny too," I say as I exit the car and head for the front door.


	5. Chapter 5

It doesn't take long to make the house look just like it had when we'd left it last. The dust covers had done their job well. So had the gardeners and the maintenance man. The yard looked loved and once all the furniture had been uncovered the house looks lived in.

Within two hours we are all set. Alice had left closets full of clothing and Bella is a close match for her things so she is well catered for. My own clothes hang right where I'd left them.

I leave Bella to explore the place while I make some calls. I transfer some money into an account I can access in town and then arrange for another of my cars to be delivered. I have a few housed in Seattle and am told that my choice will be with me the next day. The family would be able to spot me in the Volvo easily so I choose a Nissan from my collection. I'd passed four of those on the trip so they might not pick that out of a crowd so easily.

Next I drag out my laptop and set about searching names attached to the town. The Newtons were still breeding I learned. A new generation of other familiar names had stayed and set up lives here too I saw as I scrolled through the pages of the local Chamber of Commerce website.

The nearby reservation at La Push beach had flourished since I was here last. They had modern facilities on par with the rest of the town and a steady birth-rate if the stats on their pages were true. The tribe had been small, self contained and relatively poor compared to their township counterparts before. I wonder how they'd turned that around in two generations.

Next I make myself familiar with Charlie Swan. There are numerous newspaper articles about the man and he seems to have been genuinely liked and respected before his death. Afterwards he'd been greatly missed.

I googled a map and can see that two new housing estates have been built and occupied in my absence. Neither of them poses a problem for our hunting needs though.

Our land stretches to the river at the rear and there isn't a neighbour for five miles on either side. We were well protected and the forest was well stocked according to the National Park website.

"This place is awesome," Bella announces as she comes down the glass staircase and plonks herself into an armchair beside me.

"I always liked it here," I tell her as I look around the living room.

"Is that your family?" she asks, nodding towards the portrait above the fireplace.

"That's us in all our glory," I chuckle.

"You're all so beautiful," she muses as she gets to her feet and makes a sweep of the entire room, coming to a stop beneath the portrait itself.

"So are you," I tell her. I mean it too.

"The change," she laughs quietly as she shakes her head.

"Nothing to do with it," I mumble to myself as I watch her. She comes to a stop below the portrait again. She tilts her head adorably as she studies us. "The pair in the middle are my parents. Carlisle and Esme. The dark haired little one and the blonde by her side are Alice and Jasper. A mated pair. The other pair are also mated, Rosalie and Emmet," I explain.

"Mated pairs. Weird thing to call couples," she says casually. "And you on your own on the end. Have you not had a mate then?" she asks.

"Never," I tell her.

"A girlfriend then? A lover? A one night stand at least?" she asks with a laugh.

"Never," I tell her again. I want to ask if she has but I don't dare.

"Me either," she offers and I can't help the hiss that escapes my lips. "Is that bad?" she grimaces as she comes back to the armchair beside me.

"Not at all," I assure her. "But can I ask why not?"

"Never found anyone I could be bothered with I guess," she shrugs. "Girls just throw themselves at anyone who shows them the slightest interest these days. It's gross."

"In my day we had to court them," I shudder at the memory. "Holding hands was monstrous," I laugh. "Now women go around almost naked and men pick and choose a new one for each day of the week." She stares at me for the longest time and I can predict exactly what her next question for me will be. I answer it before she asks. "I was born in 1901."

"Holy fuck!" she whoops. "You're fucking ancient!"

"Thanks," I mutter darkly as I get to my feet. "Have you chosen a room up there?" I ask, nodding up the stairs.

"Yeah," she mumbles. "Sorry. I didn't mean it. It was just a shock that's all. You seem very young to me. Honest."

She seems sincere so I say nothing and just nod to show her I'd heard her. "My room is on the top floor, right at the end of the hall. Say if you need anything. I'll hear you," I tell her as I make my way up the staircase.

She doesn't say anything in return so I leave her be and head on up. Everything is right where I left it of course but I do spend a little while sifting through the books and records on my shelving. I'd missed them.

I'd also missed the huge tree and the massive window that leads out to it. I throw it open and let the cold night air come into the room to clear the last of the dust. I slip on a record and lie down on the sofa beneath the other window. The music crackles as the record turns and I find myself humming along with it.

"I'm going for a shower," she says quite loudly and I have to chuckle.

"You don't need to shout, I can hear your normal speaking voice, even up here," I tell her back.

"I'm new!" she yells but I can hear the laughter in her voice as she does.

Its hours before I hear her next. I smell her approaching my room long before the knock sounds.

"I'm bored," she announces as she comes inside.

I stop the record I'm listening to and turn off the ancient machine. "What sort of thing interests you?" I ask as she runs her finger along the rows of books in my shelves.

"I don't know," she says. "I never really had the time to do much of anything I guess. I was always busy with study and then work."

"What do you like to do to relax then?" I ask.

"Books mostly," she says with a soft sigh as she takes my copy of Wuthering Heights from its position.

"Take what you'd like," I tell her. "There's more in Carlisle's study on the second floor. Third door on the right from the landing. Take whatever you like."

"Thanks," she replies though I doubt she's truly heard or understood me.

She's already curling herself into my recently vacated spot on the sofa and the books spine is unceremoniously cracked as she begins to read.

I cringe but leave her to it. I head downstairs and back into the great room where my piano lives.

There's nobody for miles so I won't disturb anyone if I play well into the night and as I settle on the familiar stool and run my fingers over the well worn keys I smile to myself.

It's good to be back.

The sun is up already when she comes back down the stairs.

"I could get used to reading an entire novel in one night," she laughs as she approaches.

"It does have its advantages this not sleeping," I agree as I close the lid of the piano.

"You're very good," she says with a nod towards it.

"Thank you," I tell her. I'd probably have blushed if I'd have been able to. "I thought we might venture into town for a look around. We'll stay in the car of course."

"I need to hunt first, but sure," she answers.

"There's good hunting here," I tell her as I nod towards the huge glass doors at the back of the dining room that open out into the yard.

"How far can we go?" she asks as we step down off the decking.

"Five miles east and west and all the way to the river to the south but we can pretty much run as far as we like here as long as we steer clear of town.

"The National Park is only thirty miles south after we've crossed the river and its thousands of hectares of great hunting."

"I can't swim," she says as we begin the run down the yard.

"You can now," I tell her as we hit our stride and she begins to streak ahead.

"See you at the river then," she calls back to me.

I shake my head and follow as fast as I can. But she's just too damn fast right now for me to catch her. I find her at the edge of the river staring down at it when I get there myself.

"Anything in there that'll hurt me?" she asks.

"There's nothing on land or water that'll hurt you other than another vampire and I haven't smelled one that's been here for at least the last decade," I assure her.

She nods and then she's off. She takes a running jump and dives headlong into the inky water. I do the same and when I come up she's stroking away towards the other side like a seasoned professional.

I catch her though. She might be a faster runner for now but I can out swim anyone.

I tug on her foot and she yelps, but she doesn't stop stroking. We are on the other side in minutes and then she's running and I'm chasing again.

She darts through the trees ahead of me and I follow on scent alone. I find her in a little clearing with a huge male deer beneath her lips when I get there. I take up my usual position in a tree and just watch her. Her eyes meet mine and I swear I see her grin even though her lips are shut tight over the beasts pulsing jugular.

It's the usual swipe of her mouth when she's done and then she comes to the base of my tree. "Tastes different," she announces casually.

"Different area, different grasses, different taste," I tell her as I jump down. "You need another?"

"Nope, I'm all good. I want to watch you do it now," she grins.

The erection I'm already suffering with gets impossibly harder at the thought of her watching me. I can't speak so I simply nod and take off after the rest of the herd she'd scattered. I take a female to the ground and am drinking my fill as she approaches. I expect her to take up residence in a tree like I did but she doesn't. She just flops down in the grass ten feet away and stares at me as I feed.

I don't feel the need to growl at her or anything, but it is very strange to have someone watch me feed. Only Carlisle had ever done it when he was teaching me how right after my change.

"You feeling it?" she asks with a grin. I think about lying but wonder why I'd bother so I just nod around the throat of the deer. "Me too," she smirks.

I finish feeding and shove the deer away. She's still grinning at me but I'm not in a joking mood. I advance and she retreats. All the while with a smirk across her face. I stalk her properly then. As playfully as I can manage with desire coursing through my body. "If you don't wish to be caught by me you should run," I warn her.

"Maybe I wanna be caught," she taunts, but she does start running all the same.

The chase is on.

She runs full stretch back towards the river and I hear the splash she makes as she dives. I'm a full twenty seconds behind her when I come to its edges myself but I'm only five seconds behind her when we hit the other side.

Try as I might I can't catch her during the run back to the house.

She stops when she hits the back decking, turns and faces me and smirks at me again.

I can't stop. I can't stop myself and I don't want to as I run at the same pace I had been over land. I catch her about the waist and we go crashing to across the deck towards the glass doors.

She's under me and even though she doesn't need to she's breathing hard.

"Tell me no and I'll stop," I tell her, giving her an out if she wants one.

"Will it hurt?" she asks seriously as I stare down at her. I understand what she's asking of me.

She's never done this before either. "No idea," I tell her truthfully before lowering my lips to hers.

There's no fight or fury in her. She wraps her arms and legs around me and pulls me to her harder. I press myself against her and plunge my tongue into her mouth.

She moans deep in the back of her throat and I almost come undone right there.

I pull away and warn her that I have no idea what I'm doing.

She answers by pulling my mouth back to hers. She moans again and I can't help but buck my hips, desperate for relief from the ache I feel. She meets my next buck with her own hips and then we're grinding together.

She pulls my hair. I bite her lower lip. She digs her heels into my back. I pinch a nipple between my nails. She keens and mewls and begs for more. I tear the t-shirt at its seams and then I have a bare breast in my hand for the very first time.

I hiss between breaking the kiss and taking it into my mouth. I suckle as she squirms beneath me. All the while tugging my hair harder and harder. She'd never hurt me but she was driving me insane.

I bite. She begs. I lick and suck and pinch and she begs and begs and begs.

I snake my free hand between us and begin to undo the zipper of her jeans and then, right fucking then, I smell the human approaching. She does too. She's out from under me in a heartbeat – if either of us still had one – and in a crouch by the edge of the deck hissing and spitting.

"He's delivering us another car," I tell her as I get to my feet. "Go to the top floor. Stay there till I come back up," I tell her and then I wait.

She cranes her neck, hissing once more and then she runs inside. Up the stairs. I hear the door to my room slam and then I let out the breath I'd been holding myself.

I straighten my hair, right my clothing and will my erection away. By the time he approaches the front door I'm in control and I answer it with a smile.

He's not a chatty Cathy and I'm relieved as I sign his paperwork and take the copy he holds out for me. I watch as he rolls the car off the back of his truck and return his wave after he's tossed me the keys. He leaves and I race back inside.

She's pacing a line in front of my shelving when I get there. She looks and smells feral. Her hair is a mess, her shirt is slit from collar to hem and her lips are covered in my venom. She's magnificent and I tell her so as I go to her.

She says nothing. Nothing coherent anyway as she grips the back of my head and pulls my mouth to hers once again.

There's no bed in here – we didn't need them – so I simply drag her to the floor and manoeuvre us until she's beneath me again. My tongue is back in her mouth, my hand is back on her breast. She's fisting my hair rhythmically as I buck my hips into hers.

I don't bother undoing her zipper this time. I just slice the seams at her hips and pull the ruined denim from between us. The shirt comes away easily as I bite through the collar.

She does the same to my shirt and I hear it whistle past my head as she tosses it aside. She shoves me away so she can tear my jeans from me.

She flips us over. I'm startled but not altogether against the idea so I let her push and pull me until I'm where she wants me. And then it's her grinding her hips into my erection.

"Will it hurt?" she asks again in the split second she releases my lips and slides down my body.

"No fucking clue," I growl as she rakes her teeth across my hip bones, dangerously close to the top of my boxer shorts.

"If nothing can hurt us this won't," she hisses before divesting me of my boxers. "Christ," she moans as she takes me in hand for the first time.

"Fuck," I moan right back as she begins to stroke me. "Slow down," I beg as she speeds up. But she's not hearing me. She's staring at me and her eyes are open but she's not really seeing me. She's as lost to the sensations as I am.

I take her wrist and tug until she lets my cock go and then I shove her backwards so she's prone on the floor. I make quick work of her panties and then she's bare for me. I touch her carefully, I've never done this before and I don't know how to please her, but she begins to thrash and beg again so I figure I'm doing okay.

I leave her clit and slide my finger between her lips, watching her face for signs of discomfort as I go. There are none and I find myself getting bolder as my confidence rises. I have a single finger inside her up to the second knuckle when she grabs me by the hair again and devours my mouth with hers.

She groans into my mouth when I begin to stroke her from the inside. She bites my tongue when I remove it altogether.

I situate myself between her thighs and ask her if this is what she wants one more time. She grins up at me and tells me she's never wanted anything more in her whole life. I grin back and push myself home.

She doesn't grimace or give me any indication that it's hurting her and I do my best to be mindful that she's never done this as I get my head around being inside someone for the very first time.

"I'm okay," she croaks when I stop moving altogether.

"Are you sure because I'm not," I manage to choke out.

She looks unsure for a second and then she smiles up at me again. "I'm totally sure enough for us both," she tells me as she wraps her legs around my waist and forces me forwards into her again.

"Fuck!" I bellow as I bury myself to the hilt inside her.

I go slowly, more for myself than for her, and together we settle on a slow but steady rhythm. I can feel my orgasm building ever hotter inside my balls and I begin to hope that I can satisfy her before I lose control completely.

She rolls her hips a little and pulls my mouth back to hers and within another three strokes she's keening into my mouth.

"Keep going," she moans as I release her lips. "I'm so close," she warns as I speed back up. "There!" she screams as I sit back on my haunches and thrust into her deeply.

I feel her orgasm begin inside her. Her walls grip me ever tighter and her thighs begin to tremble as it approaches. I look down to where we are joined and watch as I drive into her. Her scream rattles the windows when she cums. She bucks and hisses, scratches and claws at my chest as she rides it out and when it subsides she opens her eyes and stares directly at me.

"Cum for me," she whispers and I'm undone.

Totally. Completely. It's instant. As though she's drawn it from within me with the instruction.

I push into her just once more and then it burst free of me. A lifetime of longing and a century of loneliness bursts forth from within me as I claim my mates body.

I keep thrusting through it. Wildly. With no finesse at all as my seed spills into her.

She's grinning up at me inanely as I pump the last of myself into her and I can't help but grin right back at her as it subsides. I kiss her gently and she rubs her fingers up and down my back as I collapse on top of her.

We lay like that for a long, long time. She probably has as much idea what to say and do now as I did, which is none, so we just lay there.

After what seems like an hour I roll off her and lay beside her. I reach between us and take her hand into mine. She gives mine a squeeze and the awkwardness I'd been feeling melts away from me.

"It didn't hurt," she whispers between us.

"It sure didn't," I chuckle.

"How long before we can do that again?" she asks.

"Ready when you are," I tell her and hear her bark of laughter as she gets up onto her elbow and spots my next erection.

"Damn," she whistles through her teeth as she settles herself on my hips. "We'll tour town later," she says with a smirk as she lowers herself onto my length.

"Much fucking later," I hiss as she begins to ride me.

We have one another three more times before the realisation that we weren't ever going to tire hits us. We laugh about it as we shower. We're still laughing about it as we don new clothes.

It's dark by the time we head off on the tour. Not a lot had changed. There is still a lone diner though now it is much modernised from what I remembered. The post office is still beside the bank and the police station is still right in the centre of town.

Bella sits in silence as she stares at it. We watch several policemen come and go before she says she's ready to leave. She guides me to where her father had lived and then we sit in silence for another little while as she stares at the little house.

"He loved this place," she tells me. "I was born right here. I loved coming back to it when I visited."

"How old were you when your parents divorced?" I ask, knowing it would open a whole new kettle of fish between us.

"I never told you they did," she growls before turning angry eyes to me.

"I know you didn't," I tell her as I restart the car and head for home. "My brother Jasper researched who you were and sent me what he could find."

"I see," is all she says.

She's quiet for the rest of the journey home. She slips silently from the car and goes into the house ahead of me. I sit in an armchair and wait for her to speak. I don't have to wait long.

"I was six when they split up," she begins. "I went with my mother when she left here. To Arizona first then to Florida when she remarried and then to Chicago when she divorced him too. But you probably already know all that too, right?"

"I do," I confirm. "And I know that she died eight years ago from breast cancer. I'm so very sorry," I tell her truthfully.

"These are probably things a couple learns about each other over time," she says through gritted teeth.

I can hear the accusation in her voice but I can do nothing about it now. "That's true, yes. But we aren't ever going to be a conventional couple. I was compelled to change you but I didn't know anything about you. I had to find out all I could."

"In case I turned out to be an axe murderer?" she asks, but without humour.

"Something like that," I tell her.

"Like that, but not that exactly," she huffs as she slides into another chair.

"No, not exactly like that," I sigh. "I used the information Jasper gave me to close out your life, Bella. To make it seem as though you'd simply disappeared on a whim. I needed to know who might come looking for you and why."

"So I no longer exist, is that what you're telling me?"

"You still exist," I insist, "but on paper you don't exist in one specific place anymore, no."

"What does that even mean?" she asks with a shake of her head.

"It means that you are no longer tied to one place. One residence. One job. One life. You can be whoever you want. Go wherever you want. You can reinvent yourself over and over or you can just be yourself and we'll doctor your documents to suit."

She thinks on that for a moment and then a slow smile begins to spread across her beautiful face. "Will I still have to pay my student loans back?"

I laugh then. Of all the things she could've said, or asked, I hadn't been expecting that! "I paid them out, as well as your mortgage, personal loan, car loan and a few years on your property taxes before we left."

"Holy shit!" she squeals as she jumps up and down on the spot excitedly. "I'm debt free?"

I nod and enjoy the blooming smile and her exuberant dancing as she celebrates. It doesn't last, as I expectd. I can see the precise moment her thoughts turn from joy to concern and I cut that shit off at the pass before she can put voice to it.

"Don't, "I warn her sternly. "It's a gift to my mate. It's not a loan either. What's mine is now yours. You won't be paying it back to me, ever, so you can take that scowl off your face right now."

"But," she begins but I'm on my feet and in front of her, her cheeks in the palms of my hands before she can finish the sentence.

"Don't," I tell her again. "I'm fucking ancient, remember?" I laugh and see the sparkle return to her eyes a little, "My sister has a gift and we use it to invest our money. I have enough to pay for this, the next and probably another life after that.

"I didn't offer to pay those things out, or ask you if I could. I just did it because you are my mate and it's my responsibility to make sure you are taken care of from here on in. It's what I've been planning for my entire existence. I enjoyed doing it. It gave me an enormous sense of satisfaction to do it and if you ruin that for me I'll pout," I chuckle.

"Two things," she grins, "One, I really am sorry for calling you ancient and two, please pout. I really, really want to see that."

I cut off her laughter by taking possession of her mouth. She struggles to concentrate on the kiss for a few seconds and then she pushes me away.

"You're loaded, aren't you?" she asks cheekily as we part.

"I'm well off, yes," I grin.

"Loaded?" she asks again, winking at me.

"Financially comfortable," I chuckle as I try to pull her to me again.

She bats at the front of my shirt, "If I wanted a house in France could you buy me one?"She asks sweetly.

"I could," I agree before kissing her soundly.

"If I wanted a big boat, one of those super yacht thingies, could you buy me one?"

I'm tired of the game and find speaking about money crass. I just want to be kissing her so I silence her with the answer I know will shut her up. "I could buy you your own suburb in France _and_ the company who builds those super yacht thingies. Now kiss me," I demand playfully.

"Holy shit," she whispers before giving me exactly what I wanted.

I'm in an armchair in the living room reading a medical journal, Bella is at my feet devouring another novel at three the next morning when a human mental voice disturbs my reading.

' _The boss was right, there is someone in this house.'_ The thought comes to me loud and clear as I get to my feet cautiously.

"Bella," I whisper, holding my finger against my lips in the universal sign for quiet, "there's a human scoping the property. Come upstairs," I tell her as I tug her to her feet.

Every few seconds she sniffs as we ascend the stairs to the first floor. "You won't smell him yet,' I tell her as we go into Alice and Jasper's suite of rooms that face the front of the property.

"You can hear him?" she whispers as we take up position side by side at the windows overlooking the drive.

She was slowly working out my gift I thought as I nodded. "I can hear any mental thought for a range of about two miles. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on how many voices I have to sift through in the area."

"But not mine," she whispers.

"No. Not yours. We really must work out why that is," I mumble in the dark between us.

"It's not from a brain injury," she huffs beside me.

"I'm sorry about that, but you got a good, clean shot in so surely we're even on that now?" I whisper.

"We'll see," comes her reply.

I turn my attention back to the matter at hand. We have no need for lighting as we see perfectly well in light or dark, so we can stand in the window and watch our scout without detection. "Here he comes," I tell her, pointing to the right side of the drive that is lined with trees. "He'll appear in three, two, one..."

On cue the man emerges from the trees and cranes his neck from right to left, surveying the property. "What's he thinking?" she whispers.

"That his boss was right. That there is someone living in this place again. The lights in the downstairs rooms and my car in the drive have confirmed it for him."

"What's he want and who is his boss?" she asks.

"Unless he thinks of a name I have no idea," I explain. "And he wants to look in the windows to see if anyone is moving around on the ground floor before he breaks in and takes what he can carry," I hiss.

"Shouldn't we stop him then?" she asks.

I can smell the intensity of her venom. Outwardly she looks calm and in control, inwardly she's seething because this man is invading her territory uninvited. Her reaction is as instinctual as her ability to hunt so easily.

"Watch," I tell her as the man creeps out of the shadows and approaches the front porch.

Two security lights come on the instant his movement is detected. He barely balks at that and in his thoughts I can hear him laughing about how many times he'd broken into places that had those lights installed because the occupants assumed it had been an animal that had tripped the sensors.

We lose sight of him when he goes up onto the porch properly as we are directly above him. But I can still read his thoughts. He's looking through the panes of glass that flank the front door and licking his lips at all the quality 'gear' he can steal.

"Stay up here," I tell Bella who nods to show me she's heard.

First I go into Carlisle's study and flip the switch that turns off the security lighting. This delights our scout.

Next I go to the end of the hall on that same floor and enter Carlisle and Esme's suite, then their ensuite. I slide the window open and jump down onto the ground from there. I go around the side of the house and creep along the shadows that now hug the outside of the building.

My man is now thinking how stupid I am, though not me personally as we've never met, that I've turned off the security lights and made his job even easier.

When I'm within ten feet of him I cough. "Can I help you?" I ask casually with a wide smile.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouts. His thoughts are in chaos as he searches for a good reason to be on my property. "You scared me," he says to stall for time. "I've broken down out on the road at the front and saw your lights on hoping you were home and had a phone I can use?" he covers quickly with a well used line.

"No reception out here," I tell him with a shrug, "but I can come and take a look at your car though," I offer, hoping he'll accept so that I can get some information about him from his vehicle.

"Oh, no, that's alright. I don't want you to have to do that at this hour. I'll, ah, just walk into town. It's not far. I'll collect the car tomorrow. Thanks anyway," he says quickly, almost running back down the drive as he flees.

I stand in the drive and listen to his retreating thoughts before going back inside.

"Whoever he's working for wanted to know who was living here and why I was with Bella Swan in town earlier," I tell her when I get back to Alice and Jasper's rooms.

"He thought about me specifically?" she asks and I nod to confirm. "Well then," she says with a grin, "I think you and I need to be seem a lot more in town then. I had no idea how to start looking for the bastard who had me shot, now I don't have to worry about that."

"How so?" I ask, not understanding her reasoning.

"They've made it easy for me," she grins. "They're searching for me. All I have to do is be searchable and they'll out themselves. Saves me the effort," she says happily.

"You are utterly ruthless and very cunning," I chuckle as I pull her to me, "I like that in a woman," I assure her as I lower my lips to hers.

"And you are hard. I like that in a man," she purrs against my lips.

The next afternoon we make our second trip of the day to town. We're 'being seen' and it is all quite amusing to me. I hadn't had quite so much fun in an age. Everyone is a suspect. Every human in town could be the 'boss' and seeing as we have no clue who are were looking for we fill the hours of our first trip making up back stories for the humans we watched.

Some were very mundane. Some were positively blue. Some were evil.

During our second trip we play five hundred questions – our own variation of twenty questions – while we drive around 'sight seeing'. We both learn a lot about one another and I feel that the time has been well spent.

Bella isn't ready to leave the aroma-free sanctuary of the car so to appear more human I get out at irregular intervals for such inane things as buying coffee, getting gas, buying a newspaper and checking for a suspected flat tyre a time or two.

I've clocked several locals who are interested in who I am, and by extension my beautiful companion who waits in the car, but as yet I hadn't heard a mental thought associated with our late night visitor or anyone who could be involved with Bella's shooting.

We give up after she gets bored of me telling her peoples thoughts as they go about their business. None of it is very interesting so we make one last loop of the main street and while we were driving past her father's former house things finally begin to get interesting.

A dark blue sedan pulls out of a side street and sticks with us the whole way back to my house. Nothing untoward about that at all and it prompts Bella to ask why it is so interesting to me.

"He's thinking about you," I tell her as I pull into the driveway of my home. "It's not the same guy that came around last night, but he knows him and wanted to see for himself if his report was true."

"His report?" she asks as we park up near the front of the house.

The sedan continues on past my driveway but I can read him for a while longer. "Our visitor last night had to report his findings to the boss and this new guy wants to double check. He just did," I tell her as we go inside.

"What do they want?" she muses as I close the front door behind her.

"No idea. He wasn't thinking about anything other than confirming that you are the Bella Swan whose picture he had been shown last night."

"I hope I looked pretty in it," she laughs as she goes towards the kitchen and out onto the back decking.

"I'm sure you did," I tell her as I come up behind her and nuzzle her neck. "Shall we hunt?"

"Definitely," she coos as I kiss her shoulder. "I'll race you to the river."

She doesn't wait for my answer. She's gone, into the trees before I've even taken a step off the deck.

I hear the shots as she does because I don't hear the thought behind them. Two distinct shots ring through the trees at the rear of my property but there are no mental thoughts to match to the event.

"Bella!" I shout to get her attention.

She stops dead when she registers the shots for herself and turns towards where I've called her from.

A bullet won't hurt her but the humanity left inside me has panic racing through my veins before I can blink. I'm about to call for her to come back inside when I see her take a good long sniff of the air and then she's off. I don't smell a damn thing so she can't have either.

"Fuck," I roar as I register where she's heading. She's not following a human scent; she's going towards the direction the shots have come from. "Bella!" I shout as I begin the chase.

She ignores me, like she always does, and I skid to a stop when I catch up with her at the edge of the road. "Did you hear him out here when we were on the deck?"

"No, I didn't."

"Long range shot then," she huffs as though she's said it a thousand times and this is normal for her. "I don't smell anyone either so he was a fair way away."

I take a sniff of the air around us but only smell the feint aroma of humans that pass by in their vehicles and the odd animal in the trees opposite. "I don't hear anything relevant," I tell her, "Just the mental voices in cars approaching."

"Someone wants to finish the job," she hisses.

"Let's wait till its dark tonight and we'll head in the direction of the shots and see what we find. The scent of him will still be there," I tell her.

"Can't we go now?" she whines, stepping from foot to foot impatiently.

"Whoever it was just saw two bullets bounce off your body. That's hard enough to explain. We don't want to add supernatural speed to his report. As it stands he'll think he missed," I tell her.

"He didn't fucking miss," she hisses as she rubs the spot at her temple where the two shots should've ended her life. "It didn't hurt but Christ, how many times does a girl have to be shot in one lifetime?" she asks, rhetorically I hope because I don't have an answer. In true newborn style her mood switches in seconds. "Too bad for him that bullets just bounce off me now," she laughs as she reaches for my hand. "Let's hunt then fuck," she announces matter of factly.

"In that order?" I growl as I shift my erection to a more comfortable position.

"We'll see," she calls over her shoulder as she takes off back the way we came.

On our way back to the house later, much much later, I scoop up the spent shell casings from the yard. "Someone isn't happy with you," I tease her as I show them to her in my palm.

"Yeah well, he, or she because I'm all about equal opportunity, isn't going to be very happy when I catch up to them," she hisses as we go inside. I don't doubt that for a second.


	6. Chapter 6

Bella agrees to run at a slower pace so that I can follow the scent of our hit man human. I think she agrees begrudgingly.

The scent is strong and we follow it from a mile up the road from my driveway and almost two full miles into the forest. He'd made a 'hide' for himself out of branches, leaves and sticks but he can't hide his stench from either of us.

"Remember that," I tell her as she takes a good long sniff. We dig around in his hide but find nothing of note. "If you ever cross his path you'll know him," I tell her.

"Even in a crowd," she asks as she toes the branches aside.

"Even in a crowd," I confirm. "It would've taken him a good hour to trek up here. We weren't home more than ten minutes before we went out onto the decking. He was here already."

"He's not the same one from last night is he?" she asks, referring to our scout slash burglar.

"No. He's not. When we get home you'll smell the difference between them for yourself."

"So now we have three," she hisses as she kicks the last of the sticks away from the crude shelter. "And no way to connect them."

I walk in a wide circle around his hiding spot, sniffing all the while. "He left in this direction," I tell her, nodding to the west where his scent leads. "Let's see where he came from."

She nods, gives his hide a nasty scowl and then we run, hand in hand, along the same route our hit man has taken.

I know where he's heading long before she joins the dots. The reservation.

I pull her to a stop just beyond its boundary and put my finger to my lips. "This is as far as we go," I tell her quietly. She raises her eyebrows at me in confusion. "I can't let you loose around humans yet and on the land from here onwards they are scattered all over."

"Fair enough," she whispers. "At least now I know that the problem originates from here."

"Let's go towards town. We'll walk the streets now that all the humans are tucked up in their beds and you can practise resisting their scents."

She nods but says nothing as we begin to run back to town. We walk all night when we get there. Hand in hand. Up and down the main streets a hundred times as we talk. She does well when we smell the baker open his shop at three in the morning, and quite well when an early morning jogger goes by one street away at five, but I can tell she is at her limit when she reaches to cup her throat at six when a car goes by with its window down.

We stop for her to hunt on the way home and after we've sated our _other_ thirst thoroughly, twice, we take off for the house.

The next morning I am startled by the vibration of my burner phone. The text is to the point, that's for sure.

' _Family not happy with you. All pissed. I can't see you properly. I'm pissed too. Alice. p.s. you're a selfish bastard.'_

I know I'm going to delete it without replying, but I do toy with the idea of not sharing it with Bella first. In the end I can see no good reason not to show her.

"What have you got there?" she startles me as she comes into the living room.

I show her the phones screen and she grins. "I don't understand how her vampire gift works real well yet but her texting skills are great," she laughs.

"For some reason Alice can't see me well," I begin to explain. "Usually she can pinpoint where I am and what I'm doing if she concentrates. She can do it with anyone she's met. Anywhere in the world.

"But for some reason, right now, she can't see me clearly. I think I like that," I grin.

"I wonder if she can see me?" She asks as she slides onto my lap. "If you can't read me maybe she can't see me?"

"I'd be willing to be that's exactly it," I laugh as I hold her tightly to me. "Do you agree with her?"

"About what?" she asks as she gets comfortable and nudges me until she is.

"Am I a selfish bastard for keeping you all to myself right now?"

She thinks on it a moment. "I don't know them so I only know of them from what you've said. But, if they would take me away from you for long hours, or insist I play dress ups," she shudders as she says it, "then no. I don't think you're a selfish bastard."

"I don't like being away from you for ten minutes," I admit.

"Me either. So fuck that," she giggles. "For now anyway. I will want to meet them at some stage. But not yet. Let's hide out for a while longer, yeah?" she asks.

Her reactions to things are never what I am expecting but find myself thinking that _that_ is not unusual.

Apart from calling me a bastard when her change was complete, and the punch I didn't see coming that same day, she'd never baulked at anything. She never once complained about the loss of her humanity. She'd never once complained about the loss of her anything actually.

She asked questions, I answered them honestly, she thought on it and accepted it. All of it.

In fact, to me, she seemed pleased that I'd changed her. That should've worried me. It didn't.

She asked me only a few days ago if I'd researched her to find out if she was an axe murderer, and I had, but there was no research I could've done to determine what sort of vampire she'd make.

Turned out she was a brilliant one. An instinctual hunter. A lethal predator. Fiercely territorial. A natural. It was so though she'd been created to become one.

For all her questions about whether or not she could ever marry or have children she'd never once grieved for those losses, even though we could get married if she chose.

Married. We could get married one day.

I'd fantasised about that for a century. I'd never been able to conjure up an image of who would be standing by my side at the altar, but I had thought a lot about being someones husband.

"Vampires can get married," I blurt out before I lose the courage.

"Good to know," she whispers before turning her face upwards and nipping the underside of my chin. "When you go to choose the ring just remember that I know that you're loaded."

I say nothing. I just smile above her. The instant this bullshit in this bullshit little town is over I am going ring shopping.

Two more similar texts come over the next two days. One from Alice and one from Jasper begging me to get in contact because Alice is driving him insane. I show Bella. She laughs. I laugh. I delete them.

For the following two days we are seen in and around Forks as much as we dare without raising the suspicions of the humans who are beginning to think it odd that we just drive around.

Nobody takes a shot at us. Nobody thinks about either of us in any way that may have linked them to this 'boss' person.

On the third day I even stop into the Police Station to surreptitiously ask directions – hoping to illicit some interest or at least another move from the 'boss' – but nothing comes of it.

Maybe we'd scared him off after he got the report from his shooter that she'd survived yet another hit. I doubted it, but anything was possible.

Two days after that he made his next move. We'd driven to first beach in the middle of the night for a swim there. We climbed the cliffs and dived off a dozen times each and are about to call it a night when an odd whistling sound came from the direction of the trees. Within seconds a huge fireball, and matching explosion, rocks the area.

We leap from the water and by the time we get to the top of the cliff we can only watch the fire rise above us. "My car," I hiss, "he's blown up my fucking car!"

There is nothing to be done. My car is engulfed in flames. Bella is seething and I am barely able to contain my anger as I watch the Nissan crackle and pop.

"Did you hear anything?" she asks as she circles the wreck.

"Don't get too close. I might have forgotten to mention that if you burn you die," I tell her. "And no, I didn't hear a damn thing."

"The whistling was the shot," she tells me as she walks around and around what's left of the car. "Longish range," she muses. "Probably hit the fuel tank directly. Someone doesn't want to come very close to us," she hisses.

"Fucking cowards!" I bellow into the night air.

We both hear the sirens at the same time. There is to be no hiding this. The plates and engine number could be used to trace the vehicle to one of my companies and then directly to me. I am now known to be in the area thanks to my stop at the police station earlier. And here I am, at the scene. No, this is going to have to be handled in a human way.

"Run," I tell her. "Run home. I'll get this sorted and follow as soon as I can. Follow the coast until you find the mouth of the river. Follow that upstream and you'll smell our scents in the forest behind the house."

She nods to show me she's heard, kisses me forcefully on the mouth and then she's gone. Well ahead of the approaching human police officer who has replaced her dad.

Two hours. Two fucking hours later I am delivered to my home in a police cruiser.

Bella laughs her head off as I walk into the house. "Oh how I wish my dad was still alive," she laughs. "I'd love to have seen the look on his face if he had to deliver my mate back to me in the back of his cruiser!"

"It's not funny," I growl as I shoot up the stairs and into my bathroom to clean up.

I stand under the hot water for an age. Had I been human my skin would've pruned and I'd have been waterlogged. Instead I am just fucking horny. She'd called me her mate. She'd called _me_ her mate.

I find her in the living room, another book's spine cracked open. I put a kiss on the top of her head and then settle into the other armchair. "We'll have to take the risk and use the Volvo tomorrow when we go to town," I tell her.

"Sorry about your car. Did you love it very much?" she asks, not looking up from her page.

"Not especially," I gripe. "Doesn't mean I ever wanted to see it burnt to a crisp though."

"No, I don't suppose you did. Whatever happened to my car?" she asks, nose still buried, eyes still racing along the lines of type.

"Jasper would've arranged for it to be disposed of, or he'd have done it himself by now," I say as I turn the page on my own book.

"Shame. I kinda liked it."

"It was awful," I mumble. "Terrible brakes and the suspension were as hard as nails. The transmission was sticky and the steering was not exactly deft."

"You drove it?" she asks, still not looking up.

To an outsider it would've seemed the height of rudeness us conversing whilst reading and not showing one another proper attention. But for a pair of vampires it was perfectly natural to be able to do both, without feeling as though one or the other was being ignored.

"No. I never drove it. Emmett and Rosalie love cars. They leave magazines around."

"I don't speak car fan," she tells me but I think I already know that about her.

"Do you need anything from town tomorrow? The burner phone I was using was in the Nissan so I'll need to get another."

"I have mine if you want to use that. If it's still connected," she says idly. "Oh I love this bit," she chuckles, holding up the page for me to see.

"Yours is still connected," I tell her after nodding at her page. "I'll get another for myself. You should hang on to yours in case we are separated again like tonight."

"Were the cops nice to you about it?" she asks, the laughter in her voice just a fraction of what it had been when I'd gotten home, but it is still there.

"Very," I growl.

Without warning she snaps her novel shut and I toss my book to the floor beside my chair. She's got something on her mind. "How about a blow job?"

I pinch the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger and suck in an unneeded breath. "Christ woman," I hiss.

"What?" she says, feigning innocence. "I've never done it. You've never had it done to you and I'm bored."

I can't help but laugh. "If bored equals getting a blow job I'm in," I bark as I get to my feet, taking her with me. I race up the stairs with her slung over my shoulder, her slapping my ass in mock protest the whole way. I kick open my bedroom door and stalk inside with her.

"Buy a bed in town tomorrow too," she says casually as she pulls her t-shirt off over her head and exposes her bare breasts to me.

"Done," I tell her as I shuck my own clothing. "Join the dots on this for me," I groan as she pushes me backwards and sits me down on the sofa by the windows. "How did you make the leap from cars to cops to bored to blow job?" I ask as she gets on her knees in front of me.

"On the run home last night I got thinking about all the changes in my body," she shrugs. "Christ you're hard," she whispers as she takes me in hand.

I hiss. "Always. Changes equals blow job how?" I manage to croak as she begins to stroke me.

"I can run like the wind now. If I ran to the mailbox before I'd trip and break my neck," she says before running her thumb over the bead of precum on the head of my cock.

"Still not seeing the connection," I tell her.

All I can do is stare as she puts her thumb in her mouth and groans. "Nothing can hurt me now. There was no pain when you took my virginity. I figured others things must have changed too. So I tested to see if I still had a gag reflex and I don't."

"Fuck!" I roar as she lowers her mouth to me.

The mental leap she's made, and just how she's tested for a gag reflex, are put out of my mind as she begins to suck and lick. Slowly at first – which is agonisingly brilliant – then faster as she grows in confidence.

The more I moan the harder she sucks. The more I growl the longer stroke she makes.

When I pull on her hair to make her slow down she speeds up and when I warn her I am about to cum and she should stop if she doesn't want to swallow it she opens her eyes wide, looks up at me through her lashes and smiles wide around my length. I promptly cum in her mouth. Instantly.

"Any good?" she asks after I've stopped trembling and I am coherent enough to open my eyes.

"You're fucking perfect," I growl as I leap up, drag her bodily to the floor and slide down her body. "After I've tasted you I'm going to fuck you and then you're going to tell me how you tested for a gag reflex," I smirk before lowering my mouth to her sex.

Turns out she simply stuck her fingers down her throat and waited to see if she'd gag. The explanation was a bit of a letdown actually. I'd imagined something with vegetables or perhaps the vibrator from her bedside cabinet that I'd packed for her.

I duly replace the burner phone and order a bed in town the next day. Bella has waited behind at the house as she still can't go into stores with me. She hunts while I shop and I wonder if that will allow Alice to see me. I put the thought away and meet up with Bella out on the edge of the highway that leads out of town.

We've planned to run to Port Angeles to see if we cross the scent of either of the two humans we've smelled at the house and the hide.

We jog happily along in the trees that border the highway for a good few miles when we came to a section that is wide open. To any passing human we will just look like two ordinary joggers a long way from either town so we have planned to simply cross over the road at a human pace and continue running on the other side.

' _My lucky day.'_

I turn to stare at the driver of the oncoming car the instant I hear the thought and manage to pull Bella to the side as the vehicle swerves violently towards us. We have plenty of time to skip out of the way and neither of us was ever going to be hurt from being hit, but the drivers intentions have been made crystal clear with the manoeuvre.

He jerks the wheel as soon as he realises he's missed hitting us and corrects enough to put him back on a straight path on the highway and as he heads off in his original intended direction he is cursing for having fucked it all up.

"Don't give chase!" I shout to her as she takes off after him. She stops, the very first time she stops at my suggestion yet, turns and runs back to where I still stand.

"Why not?" she hisses, hands on her hips. She is seething.

"Because you'll catch up to him easily," I growl. "How do we explain that away to all the other motorists who'll see you keeping pace with a speeding car?"

"Fine," she huffs, turning to look down the road at the tail lights of the car in the distance. "I couldn't smell him. He had his windows shut. Did you hear him?"

"He just thought he was lucky to see us both out here," I tell her as we cross back over the road and head for the trees again. She will need to hunt now. "But it was a different guy to the other two we've scented. Different thought patterns from the guy who followed us in the blue sedan."

"So now there are four," she hisses as she takes off once we're out of sight of the road.

I still can't catch her so I concentrate on her scent and follow her deep into the forest. She feeds fast and furiously on the first poor, unsuspecting deer she comes across and once she's done she asks if I need something. I tell her I don't and then we walk in the direction of the road again.

"This guy recognised us both?" she asks.

"In his thoughts it was both of us, yes."

"They've been given a picture of me, we know that, but I wonder how he knew you were a target too?"

"No idea," I tell her as we cross back over the road and slip into the trees on the other side. "Maybe they've noticed that we're always together. If you're around I'm around. Simple."

"I'm getting bored with it all," she says as we run. "Is there any way we can arrange for my dads files to be sent here from my house?"

I think about it for a moment. "Possibly, but it might expose our hiding spot here."

"Yeah, it probably will," she grumbles.

We run for a little further when I have an idea. "I think I can do it," I tell her as we come to the first suburban backstreet in Port Angeles. We stop and I wait until she has taken a good long sniff before we begin to walk casually along the tree line at the back of the housing estate. "Tell me when it gets too much," I offer, to which she nods. She's holding her breath. "If the family is watching our houses back there, which they will be because they're nosy fuckers, and I create a diversion I think I can get them to follow that and then I can get those boxes from your house out."

She doesn't speak, just nods to show she's heard. She gives me a thumbs up and I grin. A diversion it is.

We don't cross any familiar scents during our time in the outskirts of Port Angeles and her thirst is too strong for us to venture into the town itself so we head back home pretty quickly.

Later I give detailed instructions to the two removalist crews when I call them. Two different firms.

The first crew will enter my home and box up my clothing, books and the contents of my living room. They will then drive it across the country to New York. I make sure that each box is clearly labelled with the address to one of my homes there and have to hope that none of the family stays behind when the truck leaves.

I bank on them following it, or going on ahead of it, when they learn where my stuff is being sent.

The second crew will go to Bella's home the following day and collect her father's file boxes and bring them here.

With enough of a cash incentive I have it all done anonymously, just in case the family decide to investigate the crews I use. There will be no record anywhere of the transaction, or the address the second crew have delivered to.

The next day a huge bed is delivered. There are gouges in its posts and headboard an hour later that match the width of Bella's fingernails exactly. It is a very good investment.

A day after that I have the file boxes in my living room and a text from Alice telling me I'm still a bastard. That means Jasper has managed to trace my newest burner phone. Jasper himself texts me a little later that day to curse me for the completely unnecessary trip the whole family had taken to New York.

I smash that phone under my heel and dispose of its pieces in the river on our next hunt. I have bought a dozen of them on the last trip to town anyway.

We spend a whole day and a whole night reading through the files. We make pages and pages of notes and have the entire contents spread out on the huge dining room table in order of interest.

Anything that mentions the Res is at one end, everything else is at the other.

A pattern starts to emerge almost immediately.

The Res has an income that doesn't match tax records.

Each time over the previous five years that the Res constructed something new Charlie tried to find out how. Every time the Res updated something, be it technology or communal spaces, Charlie tried to find out how it had been funded.

Someone was coughing up a lot of cash for a lot of new building works and Charlie had finally asked the question of the tribal elders how it was all being paid for. A week later he was dead on duty.

His notes never lead either of us to who that someone might've been. In fact he'd never found out much at all. It seemed as though he had been the only one interested in it. We found a lot of email copies and phone transcripts from the times he'd tried to get answers from local government officials. The answers were always the same. What happens on the Res is their business.

His questions had gotten him killed.

"Any theories how they're funding it all?" Bella asks after we've both read the last folder.

"It can't be anything legal or your father would've found it," I tell her as I shut the file. "So that rules out investors or investing. Same goes for property development, an invention of some kind or the sale of legitimate goods."

"Could be extortion," she muses.

"Could be, but I can't think who they'd extort from."

"Me either. I don't see anything in dads notes that says anything about anyone complaining about being stood over," she grumbles.

"How long since you were here last?" I ask. She tells me two years. "Did you ever go anywhere near the Res when you visited?"

"Sure," she shrugs. "Dads best friend lives there. Billy Black. They went fishing together all the time. We hung out there for cook outs and stuff. I played with his kids when we were little and hung out at the beach with them when we got a bit older."

"Did they have all this two years ago?" I ask, pointing to one of the maps Charlie had pinned to a folder.

"That building definitely wasn't there," she says of the massive structure near the front entrance. "There was only a couple of small buildings for the school. No gym and definitely no pool either."

I pick up another folder and show her the photos inside it. "Nobody ever had a car like that the last time I was here," she tells me as we look at the sports cars and SUV's Charlie had observed coming and going.

"Its drugs," I tell her matter of factly. "It has to be. Drugs are easy to make. They've got all this room," I tell her as I sweep my hand over the larger map showing the boundaries of the reservation. "Nobody goes on that land that isn't invited. They govern themselves pretty much. And all these new facilities would cost a lot more than extortion could ever bring in."

"The elders would never approve of that," she hisses.

"If it means their people have better lives they might turn a blind eye," I hedge.

She cocks her head to one side and nods, though I can tell she's not happy with my assumptions, or that they make sense to her. "You think my dad found out or did he just ask the wrong person too often?"

"Maybe both," I sigh.

"What do we do now?" she asks.

I grin then. "We've been being seen in the wrong places," I tell her. "We need to be seen a little too close to the Res."

"Then I need to desensitise myself to humans faster," she says with a grin of her own.

"We'll start in the morning," I smile.


	7. Chapter 7

With the window cracked half an inch we drive through the suburban streets just before dawn. We only pass a single human who is up early because his wife snores and he'd much rather just get up than toss and turn for the next hours.

Bella does well when his scent streams in through the cracked window. I watch her roll the flavour around on her tongue.

"Not so bad," she tells me as she cracks the window a little more.

By midday she has the window completely down but we aren't roaming through busy streets, just back streets. The true test comes when we go by the football field at the back of the high school. There are a dozen jocks on it running laps. She sniffs long and hard and does put her hand to her throat but she doesn't growl or claw at the dash.

She's quiet but doesn't look stressed at all. I tell her she's doing brilliantly and am thrown a beautiful smile in reply.

We go around again and again until the jocks have finished their practise. She's as steady at the end as she was at the start. Hand to throat but not hissing, growling or tense.

We hunt after stashing the Volvo back at the house and she takes three female deer one after another. I take one for myself and before I'm finished she pounces on me and we go at it like animals ourselves right there on the forest floor.

That night she receives the first of what becomes dozens of pleading messages on her own cell phone. Alice first, Esme second and Carlisle last of all. One after another they pour in, pleading with her to give them some indication where we are so they can come and meet her.

She shows me them before deleting them. She isn't emotional about it she just deletes the messages after reading them and goes back to her novel.

When the round of pleading begins again an hour later she reads the messages, hands the phone to me so I can read them and after I've handed it back she crushes it in the palm of her hands and grins. "Can I have one of your disposable ones?"

"Of course," I chuckle. "The boxes are in the bottom of my closet."

She nods and goes back to her novel. She's quite content here with me, just me. I know she wants to meet the family at some point, but apparently today is not that point. I'm pleased.

"Can I drive?"she asks a few hours later, without warning.

"Of course," I tell her, not understanding why she thought she couldn't. "The keys are on the kitchen counter."

"I don't mean right this minute," she tells me as she puts her book aside. "I mean in general."

"Of course you can. I assumed you didn't want to, that's why I haven't offered. Not because I don't want you to."

She nods just once. "Tomorrow when we go around the humans I want to drive us."

"Deal," I smile.

"What other cars have you got?" she asks as she gets to her feet and perches herself on the arm of my chair.

"Quite a few scattered around the place," I chuckle.

"What have you got stashed close to here?"

"A different Nissan, a Jeep and a tiny little sports car you'll never have heard of," I chuckle. "You don't like the Volvo?"

"It's an old man's car," she giggles.

"I'm ancient, remember?"

"Are you ever going to let that go?" she laughs.

"Never," I promise her.

"I thought not. Can we have the Jeep sent here?" she asks.

"I'll arrange it as soon as they're open in the morning."

"How many homes do you own?" she asks next.

"Quite a few of those scattered around too," I laugh. "Some are owned by us all as a family like this one is, but I have a few that are just mine too."

"All over the country?" she asks, turning towards me and slipping over the arm and into my lap.

"All over the world, but the bulk of them are in this country yes."

"How many days would it take for your family to go to them all to see if we're in one of them?" she asks.

"This one is the furthest away from any of the others," I say quietly against her temple before kissing her there. "If they split up they could've checked all the East Coast ones and most of the middle states ones already. If they are moving as a group they'll take a few more days, but if they have been to the others already they'll appear here in a day or two."

"You've already thought of that, haven't you?"

"I've given it some thought, yes." I had thought a lot about why they hadn't found us. I had a theory as to why, but it was hard to explain and even harder to prove without having Alice right in front of me when I did, so I ignored it.

"Do you want to run now or are we staying?"

"That's up to you," I tell her truthfully. "I've already made the choice to run on your behalf once. Your turn this time."

"Can any of them help us find this guy who wants to kill me?"

"He can't kill you," I growl against her throat as I nip a little. "Alice could possibly help, if we prove why she can't see me well and we rectify that. Emmett is an excellent tracker so maybe he can help if we work out who it is."

She's quiet for the longest time. The only sound she makes is a soft purring as I kiss and suckle at the column of her neck. "Let them come," she decides eventually. "But I reserve the right to decide that we run away again later. Okay?"

"Deal," I chuckle. "The others all went off on their own when they were newly mated," I tell her. "We aren't together all the time."

"Why were you on your own back there?"she asks, tossing her head in the direction we'd come from that first day.

"I get annoyed being around three happily mated couples sometimes," I tell her honestly. "Being alone and having to hear the thoughts, and watch the antics, of the others gets a bit much sometimes."

"Won't happen to you again now," she tells me with a sound kiss under my chin. "Let's run to the outskirts of the Res and see what we see," she announces as she gets out of my lap.

"We can't," I pout.

"And why not," she pouts right back, hands firmly on her hips, "I'll run home if we cross a human I promise."

"It's not that," I say, settling the most forlorn look on my face as I do.

"What is it?" she asks, concern creasing her face.

"This," I say, pointing to my crotch and the erection that is now clearly defined behind my jeans.

"That I can fix," she hisses as she gets onto her knees.

It was a whole two hours later that we begin the run to the edge of the Res. I run the whole way with a huge grin on my face and so does she.

"The first building is coming up on our right," I tell her as quietly as I can from as far away from her as I am. I still can't catch her and it irks me no end.

She slows when it comes into sight. I watch her take a good long sniff and then she's off again. The scent is feint. A week old. The building isn't a house, just a shed. She spots the next one before I can give her a heads up and I watch again as she sniffs before running off.

She's trying to locate human scents and whilst I'm not ignoring them – it's safer if I know what's around us – I can also scent something else on the air.

She stops at the edge of a dirt track. Up ahead is a small house. It's in total darkness. "They're asleep," I whisper as I join her. "Two of them. Take a good smell." She does and then we move off again.

We come across three more small cottage type homes as we run along the track and at the end of it, right on the furthest boundary of the Reservations land, we find another shed. This one is bigger and it's got humans in it that are definitely awake.

I hear her take a deep breath in and know that's she's going to hold it while we're here. "Four," I tell her and she nods her agreement. "One of them is our guy from the hide," I grin and she nods again. I throw a nod in the direction of the boundary and she follows as I begin to run. I steer us away from the Res and deep into the forest about a mile and a half.

She takes off to hunt and I sit and wait, listening to the thoughts of those in that shed.

When she rejoins me she looks sated and more relaxed. "You did well," I tell her with a squeeze of her hand.

"They smell so delicious," she whines as she sits beside me. "What are they up to?"

"Cooking methamphetamines," I growl.

"Its stinks," she grimaces.

"It really does," I agree. "Now we know where and we know what."

"What now?" she asks but I have no idea what to do about the knowledge we've gained so I simply shrug. "Let's sit and wait. You listen to their thoughts for a while. Maybe one of them will say or think something that'll help us."

So that's what we do. We sit right there, hand in hand in silence, and we listen.

When the sun begins to rise we begin the run home. "If you ever want to make a lot of money quickly you've got the recipe now," she hisses as we come to the back of my land.

"I'll never be broke enough to want to do that," I tell her as we run up the yard.

She takes the first shower while I call the car delivery service and arrange the Jeep. I shower next and then we're off in the Volvo to town.

I watch her enjoy herself behind the wheel and once we've done three laps of the main street and two drives past the high school football field she's got all the windows down and keeping both hands on the wheel instead of one on it and one at her throat.

We head for home so she can hunt and as we approach it I hear a mental thought that doesn't fit with the drivers of the other vehicles around us.

"No time to explain," I tell her hurriedly and I see her grip the wheel more tightly. "Gun it as soon as you turn into the drive. It won't hurt, and don't slow down, but you'll get a fright. I need this to play out as he planned it."

She says nothing, just does as I've instructed and as soon as she's straightened out of the turn into the drive she puts her foot flat to the floor.

Halfway up the drive the stinger bursts the front tyres of the Volvo but she doesn't let up on the accelerator. As the back tyres blow out we go flying. The car flips twice and we're thrown around within it like a pair of rag dolls. It doesn't hurt but it's fucking disorienting.

We come to a screeching stop about four feet from the porch and Bella is breathing hard, though she doesn't need to.

"Stay still," I whisper to her as I listen. "Play dead. He won't come too close but he is going to check that we're both in here."

I hear the crunch of his boots coming up behind us and his thoughts are elated as he sees the full wreckage of the car. He retreats as soon as he's sure we're both present and accounted for. I wait another three full minutes for him to be out onto the road and heading for his hidden car before I tell her she can get out.

She's shaken but perfectly fine. She's also seething with rage. Pacing up and down beside what's left of the Volvo, venom flying from her lips as she hisses and spits.

"The burglar," she growls as she kicks one of the blown out front tyres.

"One and the same," I grin because she's matched his scent just now to the one she remembers from that first night. "He thinks he's achieved what he came here to do but he couldn't be sure we were actually dead. He's coming back in an hour to check," I tell her as I lead her inside.

"He's mine," she hisses as she grabs me by the collar and shoves her tongue into my mouth while her hands rake over my upper body.

I go with it. She's making sure I'm in one piece though logic dictates I'm not harmed if she's not.

We leave the Volvo right where it is. I'll remove it before the Jeep arrives, but for now it needs to stay in its resting position until our burglar comes to check.

We wait for him in the trees that line the drive. We both hear him bring his car to a stop out on the approaching road and neither of us makes a sound as he crunches his way up the drive towards the Volvo. He looks in and around it and is mentally pissed that there's no blood.

He goes up onto the porch as he did the first time he'd been here and looks in through the glass on either side of the door. We'd left it unlocked and he's chuckling out loud when he tests it and it opens freely.

Bella points and we're off across the drive, down the side of the house, along the back and in through the glass doors of the dining room within seconds.

Our man is standing in the living room looking around for whatever else he can pilfer easily. He's got my wallet in his pocket already and Bella's in his hand when she growls deeply.

I stay put as she moves towards him. "I'd put that back if I were you," she hisses.

He's shocked on two counts. Firstly because she's crept up on him so easily and secondly because there isn't a scratch, bruise or mark on her and he'd seen us both inside the wreckage not an hour ago.

He grins at her smugly, after all she's just a little girl and he's a big man he thinks as he waves her purse at her. "I'll take what I like," he laughs as he puts it inside his coat.

Her snarl worries him. He can't work out how she's making the sound and it does register as animal like, not at all human, but his brain works too slowly for him to work out that he's in danger.

She's got him in her hands before he's even wondered what she is.

He's whimpering long before she drags him outside – as I'd insisted she do – and he's screaming as she begins to snap the bones in his limbs.

She says nothing. She's methodical and has listened to every minute instruction I've given her. She spills not a drop of blood as she crushes him internally. By the time his heart stops beating from the combination of pain and shock she's got herself under control and her blood lust is but an annoying itch in her throat.

"Hunt," I tell her when she's done and standing over his rapidly cooling body. "I'll clean this up and meet you by the river." This had been our plan to deal with the burglar.

She's still holding her breath so she says nothing audibly. She just nods her head, runs to me, squeezes my hand in hers and then she darts through the house, out the glass doors and is away to the river.

I pull our wallets from him and throw them back in the house. Then I run out to the road and follow the scent until I find his car hidden in a shallow ditch on a side track. I pop the door lock easily, hot wire it without issue and casually drive it to my house.

I stow the human bag of crushed bones in the trunk and then I head back out the drive.

I listen constantly for approaching humans or cars that sound out of place or don't fit the situation but encounter nothing out of the ordinary as I make my way deep into the national park.

I make quick work of digging the hole and the carcass is in it and covered over fast. The car I drive further into the forest and leave it two miles from the nearest Rangers station. Then I run home.

I right the Volvo onto its rims and open the garage to retrieve four spare tyres. Rosalie keeps dozens, in all sizes, as we're pretty hard on our cars. I choose a random set and within ten minutes I've got the ruined ones off and the spares on. The body of it is a total wreck but mechanically it works just fine. Well, there are a few coughs and splutters as I thrash it along the dirt tracks inside the national park, but it does get me there. I leave it right beside the other and for good measure I pull the wiring out from under the dash so it looks like it's been hot wired too.

I'll call it in as stolen at first light.

She's waiting for me on the rivers edge.

"All sorted," I tell her as I get to her side. She kisses me soundly on the lips, whispers a thank you and then we walk home.

When the Jeep is delivered a couple of hours later Bella stands beside me on the front porch while the human rolls it off his truck. She's holding her breath and does run off to hunt the instant she can, but she's enough in control of her bloodlust in his presence to stay perfectly still while he's there. I'm so proud of her I might burst.

I join her in the forest and once she's slaked her thirst we head towards the Res again. The sheds at the edge are as empty as they'd been the night before and the first group of cottages inhabitants are not insitu.

We creep up on the meth lab quietly once I've confirmed that there's no cooking going on today and no mental voices around it. The door is bolted shut and there's a padlock and thick chain through its handles. I grin at Bella and she easily snaps them with her nails. She looks down at her hands and gives me a massive smile. She's enjoyed every part of her new nature so far.

The place is packed to the rafters with supplies and truly stinks.

There are three long benches set up with scales and small plastic bags of the finished pills and another long bench that holds all the cooking equipment.

We look over it all but find no notes or pads with anything written on them.

She taps her temple after she's snapped her fingers to get my attention and I range out my hearing. "Nothing," I whisper in answer.

"Let's dispose of all their finished product," she hisses though she's got a smile on her lips.

I nod my agreement and then point to a stack of empty boxes behind her. She puts two of them on a bench and we set to filling them with every single finished tablet we can find. We creep back out of the shed, push the doors shut as best we can and then we run with our load towards home.

The instant we are far enough away from the boundary not to be overheard be begin cackling at how pissed the 'boss' is going to be when he realises he's been done over.

Neither of us has any idea how to dispose of all the pills so we just take them to the house.

"We can't dump them in the river can we?" she asks as she stares at the boxes.

"It'd kill the fish and pollute the water table," I agree. "We can't just throw them in the trash either."

A slow smile begins to form on her lips. "Do you have a marker pen?" she asks.

I run to the kitchen and return with one for her. She writes 'I WAS COOKED ON THE RES' on the top of both boxes and then hands me back the pen. "We'll drop them at the police station," she announces.

It's brilliant in its simplicity.

We leave them on the steps of the station and then hide in the trees opposite. I call and tell the officer on duty that he should check out the boxes and then I crush the burner phone and put the pieces in my pocket to dispose of later.

We watch as the cop comes outside. He reads the message she's left on the boxes, looks around for a long minute then he takes them inside one at a time.

We run home laughing our heads off.

As soon as it ticks over nine the next morning I use another burner phone to report the Volvo as stolen. Bella asks if it will be suspicious to have had two cars damaged or stolen from one man in the matter of a few days but I think it might work in our favour.

"We know there's something going on at the Res but the police don't. We were on Res land when the Nissan was firebombed and they're going to find the Volvo right next to the blue sedan that I'm betting is registered to a resident of the Res too.

"They'll have to start looking at the place more closely now."

"I hope nobody else gets killed while they look," she says forlornly.

"We'll sort the boss out before that can happen again," I promise, though I'm not all that confident that I can. I'd do anything I could to prevent another cop being killed for doing his job though.

We head out for her to hunt and then we stroll home. Hand in hand through the thick trees.

Five miles from home she proposes a race. She gives me a two second head start and we're off!

' _That's it fuckers. Run as fast as you can.'_ I hear from my left and pull up short immediately.

"What is it?" she asks as she comes to my side, already slipping into a defensive crouch.

"Our shooter is out here. He wants us to run and run fast," I hiss as I look around us. "There's razor wire stretched between the trees up ahead," I tell her. "He's to your left, five hundred meters, up a tree. You take care of the wire, this one is mine."

She doesn't protest, just wishes me well and then she takes off in a straight line heading for the wire that would've taken our heads clean off at the pace we'd been running. She whoops when she finds it so I know she's set and then I take off in the direction of the shooter.

I can't hide the fact that I'm heading right for him and from his perch he sees me coming. He's quick enough to get out of the tree and begin to run, but no match for me, especially in the rage I'm in.

This is what I'm designed for after all. The chase. The hunt. As I take him to the ground I let my venom run freely. I won't bite him or spill his blood by I was going to enjoy myself all the same.

"You shot my mate!" I bellow into his face as I twist his right arm into a pretzel shape. "You shot her right in the fucking head, twice!" I roar as I give the left the same attention.

I ignore his pitiful pleading and his screams of agony and make quick work of his legs. I take great pleasure in crushing his sternum and snapping all his ribs and then I stand over him and listen to his heart as it futilely tries to pump enough blood through his system to combat all the leaking that's going on in his organs. I watch the light in his eyes die and when the last gurgle escapes his lips I roar into the trees.

Bella whispers her arrival and comes towards me palms up. She's no threat to me but I must look pretty feral because her eyes are a little alarmed. I'd tell her I'm sorry but it would be a lie. So I don't bother.

"I took the wires down," she tells me as she comes to my side and takes my hand into hers.

"Walk home. Hunt on the way if you must, but walk home in case there are more wires out here," I tell her before kissing her gently on her lips.

She takes off right away in the direction of the house. I watch her go for a little bit and then I sling the human sack of shit over my shoulder and run off in the direction of the National Park.

I bury him right next his colleague.

Bella greets me on the decking and I take her with me into the house, up the stairs and into my room. I lay her on the bed, strip her naked and have my way with her again and again.

It had been a long time since I'd snuffed out a human life and decades since I'd done it to an innocent one.

"He wasn't innocent," she whispers against my lips.

I must have been speaking out loud. "I still murdered him," I mutter as I take her lips again.

"I murdered his friend," she says against mine when we break the kiss. "They were both criminals. I don't feel bad for them."

I decide then and there that I won't either. One had shot at my mate and had she been human still she would've died instantly, the other tried to kill us both in the Volvo. No. I wouldn't feel bad for them.

Alice' text comes early the next morning. _'We'll arrive in pairs. Please don't run. I've got information that might help you.'_

I show Bella. "Our peace and quiet is at an end," she sighs before grinning. "The information and the help could be good though, right?"

"Could be," I mutter darkly, already mourning the loss of her undivided attention.

Carlisle and Esme arrive later that same day. They arrive quietly and without fuss.

Esme is of course smitten with Bella from the off. Carlisle isn't happy that we've been in hiding, and he's not at all happy about what both Bella and I have done to the two humans, but he's instantly enamoured and accepting of my new mate.

We have a few short hours of tranquillity before Rosalie and Emmett pull into the drive. Quiet is not how their arrival can be described. Emmett picks Bella up bodily and swings her around and around crowing about having a new little sister to play with. Rose is quieter but altogether less accepting.

Even as she's telling Bella welcome to the family she is cursing me for having changed her in her thoughts.

"We'll discuss it another time," I hiss at my sister as she hugs me hello.

"What's the point," she hisses right back as we break apart.

"Exactly. It's done now," I growl.

Esme berates us both and asks us to play nicely. Bella stands off to one side and watches us interact. She doesn't seem nervous just a little overwhelmed with all the new scents and all the new personalities in the previously silent house.

As predicted Esme bears Bella off to my rooms to discuss how to redecorate them. Bella looks unamused but says nothing as they hit the stairs.

Carlisle is already in his study thumbing through his books of notes trying to work out if Alice' theories about why I can't read from Bella have occurred before in anyone he's come across in his three hundred years. My interest is piqued that Alice has a theory but she's not here to interrogate yet.

Emmett wants to hear all about our troubles in Forks so we head into the yard so I can get him familiar with the scents we know are connected with it all. Rose refuses to join us and would much rather sulk in her room. We leave her to it.

During the night the next pair joins us.

Jasper approaches the house warily. He's seen so much violence in his history that I don't blame him. I'm quick to call out to him and reassure him that all is well. After that my last brother and sister join us all inside.

Alice sweeps Bella into a tight hug and announces that they are to be best friends as well as sisters. Jasper embraces my mate too but is much more subdued. While Alice natters away _at_ Bella he hangs back and tries to come to terms with her incredible self control.

"I don't understand it either," I tell him when I join him on the far side of the living room.

"She's barely a month old and she's totally in control of her emotions. How can that be?" he growls softly.

"No idea," I tell him honestly. "She came out of the change ready and willing to accept what she was. I've never seen it before either."

"How did she not give in to bloodlust with so many humans coming and going here recently?" he asks.

"Determination," I say simply. "She's determined to find out who tried to have her killed and why her dad was murdered for doing his job. I think she believes not giving in to her thirst is the price she has to pay to see that through."

"It makes no sense," he seethes.

He's so pissed at himself. He is over a hundred years old and still has problems with his thirst and he doesn't understand why this newborn is perfectly calm and in control of hers. "It's not a weakness," I tell him sternly when he begins to wonder if there's something wrong within him. "You were taught to use your thirst in battle right from the off. She's been taught to curb hers. You're just different. That's all."

He nods to show he's heard me but he's nowhere near convinced.

Bella comes to my side then. "Can we ask Alice about the information yet?" she whispers. Alice giggles and Rosalie snorts. "What?" Bella asks of me.

"There's no point in whispering is all," Alice answers for me. "We'll hear everything no matter how quiet you try to be. Sorry." I see Bella cringe but my sister gives her no chance to respond. Instead she drags my mate by the hand and pulls her down beside her on the sofa. "You're a shield," she announces unceremoniously.

"Am I?" Bella asks. She has no idea what that is.

"You are. A very strong one," Alice continues.

"You met with Eleazar?" I ask after reading his advice from her thoughts.

"That's what took us a bit longer to get here," Alice tells me, nodding to Jasper. "I could only see snippets of what you were up to," she points at me, "and nothing of you," she points at Bella. "Eleazar joined the dots for me.

"She's so strong she's shielding you without realising. Whenever you are separated I get glimpses of you, but never of her."

"Well then," Carlisle chuckles, "that answers that at least."

"No it fucking doesn't," Bella snipes angrily.

"Language dear," Esme frowns.

"Oh fuck that," Bella growls. "I'm out of here."

She's out the glass doors and running towards the river before anyone has a chance to cluck their tongues. I'm halfway down the yard myself before the clucking begins. The only one who doesn't is Jasper who is quite pleased to have seen the newborn lose her temper. Asshole.


	8. Chapter 8

I find her sitting on a rock just before the rivers edge.

"Language dear," she hisses as I join her.

I wince. "She's from a different time," I tell her by way of an explanation for something Esme has had a distaste for my whole vampire life. "Ladies didn't curse in her time. We don't like change," I chuckle.

"Well it's my time now," she hisses, "and I've never met a lady in my life. I'm a woman. A grown woman. And right now women curse."

"Quite right," I chuckle as I nudge her in the ribs with my elbow. "I like it when you curse."

"I know you do," she giggles nudging me back.

"Nobody wanted to speak about you as though you weren't there," I tell her. "They were all just so excited to finally meet you and Alice especially because she couldn't wait to tell you her news; they just sort of forgot to include you in the discussion."

"I feel like the shiny new toy," she gripes.

"To them you are," I tell her honestly.

"Not to you," she whispers. "You've never treated me like I was invisible or dumb. How come?"

"They don't think you're dumb," I growl. "And I never did because you aren't. You're smart and sexy and confident and utterly perfect. And you sure aren't invisible."

"Jasper thinks I'm a freak doesn't he?" she asks and I goggle at her. She'd been in control enough, in a room full of vampires for the first time, holding multiple conversations, to take in what Jasper and I had been speaking about.

"He doesn't," I assure her. "He just doesn't understand how you're so in control of yourself so soon. He struggles with his thirst and still finds it hard not to snack on the odd human."

"Why doesn't he then?" she asks simply.

"Because we don't do that. I don't mean no vampire does that, just us, as a family. Carlisle either created us all or took us in if he didn't. To be a part of this family means we don't drink human blood. I won't say none of us ever has because we've all slipped and made terrible mistakes, but we work hard every day not to."

"You're vegetarian vampires?" she giggles.

"You could say that," I laugh back, "I guess we've never discussed that have we?"

"Nope. I came out of the change craving human blood. You were so adamant that I not have it, only animal blood so I just assumed this was the way you wanted to live and I went along with it," she shrugs as though the choice is no big deal. She looks up at me and must see the shock on my face. "What? I wanted you the instant I saw you so if I have to be a vegetarian to be with you then so be it. I've never tasted it so no biggie. So far," she grins.

I am astounded and so very, very grateful to her. I hug her close and kiss her hair as I murmur my thanks. "No biggie," I echo, still stunned. "You gonna ask me?" I hedge, changing the subject seeing as we were on an information roll.

"What the fuck is a shield?" she growls playfully as she steps away a little. More growl than playful though.

"It's a mental gift. You have the ability to block those of us who have other types of mental abilities.

"Like me. I was stumped right from the off because I couldn't hear your thoughts. Jasper is pissed back there because his gift doesn't work on you either and Alice is positively outraged that she can't see you.

"I like that you can fuck with them," I chuckle.

"What the fuck can Jasper do to me then?" she asks, eyes wide in panic.

"He's an empathy, that's all," I tell her. "He wouldn't ever hurt you, though he can if he chooses to make you feel pain. But he never would, I swear it. He can not only feel what you're feeling but he can project whatever he wants you to feel onto you. Well, not you specifically because he tried it back there but it didn't work."

"Christ," she huffs. "Maybe I did have a tumour?"

I can't help the bark of laughter and she scowls at me instantly. "If you did, and I'm not saying that I think that you did, it's gone now. The change would've taken care of that."

"What else can a shield block?" she asks.

"Anything mental I think. I only know one other shield and I've not spent enough time with her to bother learning what she can and can't do.

"Hers is not like yours though. I think she can only shield herself, not others."

"If I'm subconsciously shielding you how come you can read the others?"

"I don't understand," I tell her honestly.

"Well, I don't know how or why I'm doing it, but I'm shielding you and Alice can't see you. Can you read the others thoughts?" she asks and I join the dots immediately.

"I can read the others perfectly, just like I always have," I tell her with a wide smile. "I believe now more than ever that you were made especially for me, Bella."

Her grin is magnificent as she slides off the rock and comes to stand between my knees. "I know now that Alice can't see you when you're with me but are we far enough away from the house not to be heard as well?"

"Another mile should do it," I wink.

"Two second head start," she laughs and I'm off.

She catches me easily and we tumble to the ground. We wrestle until she's got me pinned beneath her and right before she lowers her mouth to mine she hisses, "I don't give a fuck about pillow covers and paint chips and I'm not going shopping for his and hers towels."

I try and laugh but her kiss drives the thought from my mind.

Later, much much later, we head for home.

As we approach the house I begin to pick up the regretful thoughts of my family. Everyone except Rose who was belligerent to the end and in no way sorry that Bella had been made angry by anyone.

"They all want to apologise," I tell her as we stroll towards the decking.

"Whatever," she muses but she is smiling. "I'm still not shopping."

She let them all apologise, minus Rosalie, and did her best to let them have their moment of playing with the new girl. I knew when she'd reached her limit and politely excused the both of us before taking her upstairs to my rooms.

I could tell by the way she crept around and tried to be silent during her shower that our carefree love life inside the house was now over. The others had no such restraint. We lay in our bed – about which I'd received a serious amount of ribbing from my brothers – and tried not to listen to the pairs as they lost themselves in their mates bodies.

She leapt from the bed at three the following morning and announced it was _enough_. I thoroughly agreed and within minutes we were in the Jeep heading for town. She opened all the windows and just drove. She sniffed now and then at the scents around us but never tensed or gripped the wheel hard once.

After an hour she slowed down and drove us back towards the house at the speed limit. "I'm going to hunt," she announces once we are in the house and I watch as she dashes straight through the front door and out the back. She wanted to hunt alone. That was new.

I didn't follow. Nothing could hurt her and I didn't hear a mental voice or scent anyone other than my family in the area.

I go up to my rooms and take up my book. Ten minutes later Alice comes skipping to my door. "I can see you now," she says before she comes waltzing inside.

"She's gone far enough away then?" I ask as I close my book. There wouldn't be any privacy here now that the family was insitu.

Alice simply rolls her eyes as though it's obvious and perched herself on the end of the bed. "This is nice," she says as she runs her hand over the cover.

She doesn't say anything else because she doesn't need to. She let the visions come freely and as they run through her mind I read them from her. I am to be married at our home in Canada. Bella isn't in the vision because Alice couldn't see her, but the holes where she should've been are startlingly obvious to us both. "When?" I growl but of course there is no way she can tell me that. Didn't stop me asking her though.

Pieces of other visions fly through her mind but a lot of it isn't relevant to me or to Bella so I ignore those. The bits that are were fascinating to me. Me stowing Bella's clothes in a closet in my home in Chicago and again in the house in Portland.

Two cars parked side by side in the driveway of my New York residence.

"You're quite suited," she whispers as she lies back onto the bed fully. "She's quite lovely."

"She is," I agree as I savour what I'd read from her and what she'd said. "Have you seen anything that could help us end what's going on here?"

"Not yet. I'm hoping that spending some time here, and with Bella, something will come to me."

' _Meet me at the river.'_ is Bella's short text. I leap off the bed and run through the house and out the back doors. All the while listening to my sister bitch about being ditched now that I had a mate.

She was teasing. Mostly.

"Where are we running to today?" I ask as I join her at the edge of the river.

"What did she see?" she asks after kissing my cheek in greeting.

I laugh heartily. She'd gone to hunt alone to give Alice the chance to see me. "You're brilliant," I tell her. "And she hasn't seen anything yet that can help us with this."

"Oh well, we were doing well on our own anyway," she shrugs. "Let's go be seen at the Res again, that seems to stir them up pretty well."

I agree so we run in that direction. We pass the two empty sheds and the row of little cottages and when we near the bigger shed, the one that had all the pills in it originally, we slow down and hug the trees.

There's no need to tell her there are humans in it. She smells them for herself. There are three of them and I didn't need to read their thoughts to know what they are up to. All three are shouting, cursing and arguing about the loss of their product.

They are also terrified of the bosses wrath once he found out the place had been emptied. None of them wanted to be the one to tell him. Frustratingly none of them would say his actual name. They all referred to him simply as the boss.

We stayed put while they made ready to leave. One bolted the door, one threaded the chain through its handles and the third put a new padlock onto the chain. They left on foot, travelling into the heart of the reservation.

We waited until they were out of sight and then crept up beside the shed. The stench of chemicals cooking was strong. "They've made a new batch," I tell her at my side.

"Good," she hisses. "Let's make it impossible for them to profit from it."

She uses her nails to prise off a single wooden slat from the outer shell of the shed. I can only stare as she takes a lighter from her pocket, clicks it and throws it through the opening she's made. She steps back quickly and I follow her back into the trees.

Within minutes there is smoke billowing out of the structure and before long we begin to hear the shouts of angry men running towards it.

We watch as they attempt to put out the flames but by the time they reach the shed on foot its well alight and there's nothing they can do but watch it burn to the ground. Along with their whole batch of pills.

"That makes us even for the Nissan," she hisses lowly as we make our retreat and head for home.

Five miles from home she stops suddenly. I slip into a crouch but she waves me off. "Nothing's out here," she assures me. "I've got an idea and I don't think you're going to like it."

"Try me," I shrug.

"Is it enough that I've had the idea for Alice to see the outcome?" she asks.

"Usually, yes. But I don't know if she'll see what you've got going on in your head because she can't see you."

She scrunches up her eyes adorable and I can tell she's thinking really hard about her idea. I tell her I'll go to the house ahead of her to give Alice the chance to see at least me. She nods but keeps thinking hard.

Alice meets me three miles from the house and out of earshot of its occupants. "Its evil," she hisses, "but not altogether uncalled for."

I read it in her thoughts and gasp. That Bella had this kind of ruthlessness inside her made me both proud and a little afraid of her. "We'll grab what we need and go now. Tell nobody," I beg of my sister as I take her by the shoulders. "If the others learn of this they'll never forgive us."

"I can't see you when you're with her so it won't be a lie when I tell the others you've both run again," she sighs. "When it's done we'll be waiting to host a wedding."

I kiss her hard at her temple and watch her run towards home. I wait for Bella and when she comes to my side she slips her hand into mine. "I can do it on my own if you can't help," she whispers.

"I'll be right by your side," I growl and as far as I'm concerned that's an end to it.

"Did you see who it is?" she asks, knowing that if Alice could see the outcome she could also show me who it was we were ending.

"I don't recognise him amongst anyone we've seen in town or locally, but when I spot him I can point him out easily," I tell her knowing that from what Alice had said earlier she would be heartbroken at the realisation that she knew him all along. "What Alice sees is subjective. Plans change. People change their minds all the time. What she showed me depends a lot on the choices the humans are going to make. It's not too late to change your mind," I assure her. "We can punish him for your father's death without going too far."

"He took my father. How far is too far?" she hisses.

I agree with her so say nothing more about it. She knew her own mind and I had to trust that she could live with what she was about to do. "Take or leave anything you want to when we get back to the house. We're leaving right away. Alice has us covered at this end."

"It's unforgiveable to your family, isn't it?" she asks as we walk.

"It is," I answer honestly. "But not unforgiveable to me. You're my mate and I'll stand by any decision you make on this. You have a right to avenge your father's death and however you want to make that happen I'll be there."

"And if they find out later on?" she asks, probably weighing the pros and cons of her choices already.

"Then they find out later on. I could say so much to you right now about emotions and us still having our humanity inside us. And that would all be true. But it wouldn't be the complete truth.

"I'm a vampire. You're a vampire. We're killing machines. It's what we were created to do. Designed to do. I'd never condone killing an innocent even though I've done it because of uncontrollable thirst right after my change.

"But we aren't talking about an innocent human life here."

She thinks on it for a few minutes as we continue walking in the direction of the house. "I want to hold only my humanity but right now I want him to suffer. I want him in so much pain that he'll beg for death. And I want to be the one who delivers him to it."

I tug her hand to make her stop walking and then I pull her to me. "A genetic compulsion made me change you but I fell in love with you too. We'll do this together and then we're going to plan our future together."

I kiss her then. Long and hard. If she was sure I was sure. I'd follow her anywhere. I'd do any bidding she asked of me on her behalf.

"I love you too, Edward," she purrs into my mouth and the words set my body on fire.

She loved me back!

"Let's do this thing," I shout as I begin to run for home.

She streaks ahead and I curse still not being able to catch her.

There's no point sneaking into the house. It's impossible with five other vampires in and around the house – Alice didn't count as she knew what we were about to do – so we simply walked in the back door. We made our way to my rooms. We took a new burner phone each, changed into dark clothing and marched right back out the back door again.

Nobody questioned us because it wasn't an odd thing for a couple to wander off for the day on their own. Alice knew we weren't coming back and in her thoughts she wished us both well as we ran towards the Res.

The place was in uproar when we got there.

The shed was still smouldering but the crowd had dispersed somewhat. There were four men standing near it still watching and two of them were familiar scents. They'd been in the shed the first night we'd found it.

This was a problem. We'd planned to end only those who had been involved in the making of and the distribution of the drugs. We didn't know if the other two men had ever had anything to do with the process. They could just have been asked to stay and make sure that no smouldering cinders ignited anything else in the area.

The two we definitely knew were involved would be difficult to lure away on their own.

Bella's eyebrows were scrunched up so I knew she was thinking hard how to achieve that too.

I was about to give up being able to do anything at all about the two we wanted punished when a cell phone began to ring. Ours were on silent so there was no panic for us about being discovered.

' _Yeah...it's settled down now...yeah...right...I'll tell them.'_ Was what was said on the call. What was thought made me smile.

"They're being called off. Back to a meeting at a building up near the front entrance," I whisper to her. "The boss wants to regroup and decide how to deal with us now we've burned his profits. Go to our meeting spot and I'll sort these two out."

She was holding her breath so didn't answer verbally. She did tip her head to one side and stare at me for a long moment though. Then she nodded and took off towards the meeting place.

The four men began to walk along the dirt road that led back towards their meeting and I jogged along at the same pace in the trees that flanked it. I kept my eye on the pair we knew to be involved and when there was a break in their conversation I deliberately stepped on a twig. I launched myself into the tree above it the second the sound resonated.

The resulting crunch made all four men turn and look in my direction but of course there was nothing to see.

"Go on ahead. I'll check it out," one of the pair I wanted told his friends.

I grinned then, happy that he was falling back behind the group as I'd hoped. He was cautious as he came towards me but there was never going to be anything he could do about what was about to happen.

I waited until he was right below where I perched and as I let myself fall from the tree I put my hands around his neck and wrenched it sideways. The snap when it came was quite loud but not loud enough to alert his friends that anything untoward had occurred.

I put his now limp and lifeless body on the ground and ran ahead to catch up to the trio.

I tried the same trick with the crunching of a branch underfoot but the wrong human came to check. No matter. I simply moved through the tops of the trees, leaping from one to another, making enough of a noise for him to follow that he was soon deep in the forest himself.

I left him there and used the treetops to get myself back to where I'd begun. Only silently this time.

The remaining pair, one innocent and one not so much, are walking alone along the dirt track.

I range my hearing out and can only hear humans going about their business. The track is far enough away from homes and structures that I take my chance when I see it.

I run as fast as I can towards the pair. As I reach them I knock the innocent aside as gently as I can, but with enough force that he is prone on the ground. He is breathing but he will be mentally confused for a few seconds at least.

I use those precious few seconds to snap the neck of the other man. I don't wait to hear his last breath I just run back to the cover of the trees. I am hidden from human view before his companion sits up and shakes his head in confusion.

I don't wait around to see how the rest will play out. Whether he raises an alarm, or his friend joins him from his useless search in the trees doesn't matter to me.

I run full tilt towards where I'd agreed to meet Bella and there she stands. Off to the side of the main entrance to the reservation. Shifting her weight from foot to foot, her eyes scanning the tree line where she knew I'd appear from.

She smiles when she spots me and I run right to her side and take her hand. "Done," I tell her simply.

"Now for part B," she grins.


	9. Chapter 9

**I did warn that this was short. This is the last upload. Sorry ;)**

 **This is violent and extreme and nothing like I've ever written before.**

 **These aren't our usual Edward and Bella. Please keep that in mind as this unfolds.**

 **Please don't bother sending me hate mail. It will go unanswered like always.**

 **Thanks for reading and please review.**

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Part B was always going to be tricky, and a risk.

Get it right and we could walk away relatively clean. Get it wrong and neither of us would be able to show our faces in Forks ever again. Possibly the whole of Washington and maybe even the continental US.

We'd be hunted for the murderers we truly were about to become.

"Stay alert," I remind her as she readies herself to play the riskiest part of her role.

She nods but is holding her breath to protect the innocent. Then she simply strolls out from behind the trees and walks at a normal human pace right across the entrance road to the reservation.

There are two men in a small hut right inside the front gate and they clock her presence fast. Neither is too concerned. When she has reached the trees on the other side she turns around and walks right across the entrance road in the other direction. The two men are now a little more interested.

When she crosses for the fourth time they are intrigued enough to make a call to the building we'd both hoped contained the boss.

The conversation is brief but we've achieved our first goal.

The boss is sending someone familiar with Bella's picture to identify her.

Still she walked, back and forth across the entrance road.

Each time she came to me I gave her updates on what was happening inside the entrance. Still she walked. Back and forth.

When a third man joins the two in the hut he quickly identifies my mate as the one they've been hunting. This makes me so angry but we are so close to finishing this that I tamp it down within myself.

He tells the other two men to go away. To go to their homes, that he'll sort this out himself.

Neither of the innocent men has anything to do with the business of making and selling drugs so I stand stock still as they make a run from the hut. Bella, who we'd agreed would take her cues from me, turned her eyes to mine. I shake my head in an exaggerated way so she knows that it's okay to let them go.

The next time she comes to me I tell her that she's been recognised and she should prepare for the next part in the plan. She nods, kisses me lightly on the cheek and walks out of the trees for the last time.

I watch as she approaches the gate and simply stands in the middle, her hands resting on its steel beam. As predicted the man who'd been sent to identify her joins her at the gate after making brief call to his 'boss'.

I grin when I hear that he's been asked to keep her talking until the boss himself can regroup and finish this once and for all.

"Can I help you?" he asks her genially.

"Don't think so," she says pleasantly.

"What business do you have here then?" he asks, fingering the pistol at his hip so she can see it clearly.

"I'll wait until your boss arrives to discuss it," she grins, angering the man to no end.

"Oh he's comin'," he grins right back.

When I hear the thoughts of the approaching 'boss' I prepare myself for her reaction and for what I need to do next. I slip out of the trees and casually join my mate at the gate. "Hi there," I announce once I'm beside her.

She ignores me as I'd hoped. I simply stand beside her and wait.

The human is agitated now. He's not sure if he's a good enough or quick enough shot to take us both down if he's required to, but he's willing to go for her first if it's all he can achieve.

My skin prickles with rage at his thoughts but I steel myself to show nothing on my face.

Bella gasps audibly as the boss comes within sight.

"You bastard," she hisses lowly. But not low enough that the man in front of her doesn't hear it.

He says nothing though, he just waits for his boss to arrive and give instructions. The two men from the hut are long gone, just as we'd hoped.

"Lovely to see you again, Bells," the boss says smugly as he takes a pistol from his pocket and levels it directly at my head. "Such a shame you had to bring a friend along for this visit."

Bella is losing control quickly. I can see her trembling as the rage of realisation hits her. "Friend," she hisses through gritted teeth. "You were my friend once."

"It's nothing personal," the boss grins. "Its business, Bells. That's all."

"He was your father's best friend," she growls.

"Its business," he sighs, frustrated that she doesn't get it. "Now, we're going to take a little walk and we'll sort this out once and for all."

I read his intentions in his thoughts as he prepares himself to pull the trigger. There was to be no walk for either of us. He wanted us dead where we stood.

The short, sharp whistle that leaves my lips is all Bella is waiting for and within a single heartbeat she's reached out and snapped the neck of the goon who stands beside the boss.

In the same heartbeat I've leapt the gate, knocked the gun from the boss' hand and have him immobilised and under my foot in much the same way I'd kept the innocent down before. A simple knock to the head was all that was needed.

I pick up the prone piece of human waste at my feet, sling him over my shoulder, and jump back over the gate and start running as fast as I can. She's right beside me and as we turn sharply into the trees half a mile from the reservations boundary she puts on a burst of speed that sees her shoot by me.

She's waiting for me as I approach at the designated spot we'd agreed upon earlier. She's pacing a line back and forth between two trees and I can see the silvery sheen of venom on her lips.

I let the boss fall at my feet before taking her in my arms and kissing her soundly. She calms a little but there is so much rage inside her I know she's going to do exactly as she planned. There would be no talking her out of this now.

"Who is he?" I ask as I step away.

"Jacob Black. Billy Blacks son," she growls.

"You were friends as children?" I deduce and she's nodding before I've finished speaking.

"Oh yes," she seethes as she begins to walk a circle around him. "Good friends too. Him and his sisters. Every time I was here for the holidays I spent my time with them."

"Are you sure about this next bit?" I ask, though I know she is before she confirms it for me out loud. "Then go. Run. I won't be far behind you."

She mouths thank you and I know what for. She desperately wants to be the one to deliver him to our chosen spot but her bloodlust won't let her. She's thanking me for being able to do it for her.

I run for exactly two hours. The only stops I make are to hit Jacob upside the head and keep him compliant. When he rouses he begs for me to let him go. I say nothing. I just hit him and keep running.

When I reach the end of Graves Creek Trailhead I veer a little southeast and run for another twenty minutes until I can smell her scent. I follow it and range my hearing out around me as I run. There's nothing and nobody and there hasn't been a human in the area for years. It's perfect. Far enough away that his screams won't be heard by anyone.

She gives me a magnificent smile as I approach. I let my payload fall to the forest floor and then I take her in my arms. I kiss her long and hard. She's relieved to see me she tells me as she runs her hands over my chest and arms. She'd been nervous about finding the right spot as we'd not had time to scout it out prior.

"This place is perfect," I tell her as I walk a perimeter. "The last human scent was laid here years ago," I tell her so she'll calm a little more. "There's nobody for twenty miles in any direction and I'll hear anyone approaching from two miles out. We'll do it here."

"I've hunted," she tells me as she approaches the human stain. "I can do this."

"Don't swallow," I remind her. "If you do you'll kill him long before you want to."

"A dozen bites," she says but I know it's not for my benefit. "Bite but don't swallow."

I step away carefully. I'd warned her I would when the time came so she ignored my movements and continued to circle the human at her feet. I keep retreating and find a good, high branch from which to observe.

I wonder what she's waiting for, what is running through her brain, but without warning she strikes.

Wrists, ankles, thighs, the meaty flesh over his hips. Just as I had done to her she does to him. She's hissing as her lips leave his skin and spitting out wads of venom each time. She's being so careful not to swallow any of his blood and I'm so, so proud of her.

"I can't get any more into him," she says after a few minutes.

"Smell him," I instruct, as Carlisle had instructed me.

"Like acid and venom," she tells me and I know then that she's succeeded as I had.

"Now we wait," I call down to her as she retreats. I jump down from my perch and tell her to hunt. She takes off without protest and I settle in to monitor his progress.

She hunts for a good long while but I'm not concerned. I'd felt the same.

An hour later I notice the change in his skin. It becomes a little lighter, more firm around his joints. The paunch he'd been carrying at his middle begins to recede and his hair fills out where he had been beginning to lose it. His lips begin to plump and he begins to thrash and moan.

His heart starts to race as she rejoins me. She sits beside me and we both watch, and relish, his whimpers and moans. He starts to scream another hour later. I keep listening for any other sounds around us but there is nothing, just the agonised screeches of the bastard in front of us.

She hunts once more that night but as his body changes so too does the scent of his blood. It becomes less rich and begins to take on an almost chemical smell. It is not at all appealing and Bella doesn't feel the craving for it she did at the start.

Sometime during the next morning he begins to beg. Beg for any relief from the agony of the burning inside him. Bella is quick to assure him that there was to be no relief.

She spends hours recounting to him all the times he'd been her friend and comparing the loss of his friendship to the loss she felt over her father. It's a loss she's happy to carry she tells me. He begs harder then. She denies him every time.

The whole time he burns she talks to him. She tells him every human memory of time spent with her father that she can recall. She describes it all so intricately that I feel as though I know him myself.

And through it all Jacob writhes and screams.

She feeds off the screaming by the end of the second day. The louder he screams the more emotional she becomes. She tells him of all the things her father was going to miss out on now. She describes her life with me, her new life filled with strength and love and happiness and how her father was never going to know now that she'd found a partner in this life.

And still he screams.

Halfway through the third day she changes tack. She begins to explain to him what she had been changed into. She tells him everything. About the thirst she suffers and about the extraordinary confusion she felt on that first day.

She tells him about the strength and the speed, the insatiable lust she feels for me and about all the new possibilities that have opened up for her since her change.

She makes her change sound worth it. She makes me believe that she is happier now than she'd ever been as a human. She makes me see that I haven't doomed her, but rather that I'd given her a gift.

His thoughts shift then. He stops begging for death and begins to relish the power he'd rise with. I inform her of this as we hunt far enough away that his new hearing won't detect us. She simply grins at me and nods. It's what we'd discussed and what she'd wanted. She wanted him hopeful.

And as his heart begins to falter she grins at me over his now cool body and takes my hand into hers. We stand over him, knowing the end of his human existence is coming close to ending, and we watch and listen as his heart stutters once, twice and finally for a third time.

He is still and quiet for a long time and as his thoughts and intentions come to me I squeeze her hand so she'll be ready.

He leaps to his feet, slips into an instinctual crouch, and leers at her through gritted teeth. "You stupid bitch," he hisses, "you've given me the strength to kill you anyway."

Without hesitation she lunges at him.

He flails, as yet unused to the new workings of his changed body, and within seconds she's wrenched his head from his shoulders. She throws it. Throws it away like an old toothbrush and then she stands over him and smiles.

She takes a lighter from her jeans pocket and sets his body alight. His head join the swirling, purple flamed pyre a moment later and then it is done. Truly done.

"I love you," she whispers between us as the smoke rises and rises.

"As I love you," I tell her as I put a hand to her shoulder.

"What's in Canada?" she asks as we begin to jog away.

"Our cousins, for want of a better term," I tell her as we speed up.

"And we'll live there for a bit?"

"As long as you wish, love."

"You'll shop for a ring right away?" she asks over her shoulder as she strides away from me easily.

I can't help but grin smugly. "Absolutely."

All but Alice are ecstatic to have us back when we arrive on the doorstep unannounced in Denali two days later. She is concerned as we are a day late but after Bella runs off to hunt alone my sister can _see_ me and the outcome of what we'd done for herself. She runs through the visions that come flooding to her mind.

She is, of course, aghast. She'd known the plan all along but had hoped that we'd reconsider as it unfolded. We had not.

"I don't ever want to speak of it ever again," I tell her as the last of the vision plays out.

She says nothing, just folds me into a hug and holds me tightly. "No need to shop. Your mothers ring is in its box in your bedside cabinet," is all she says before she lets me go with a kiss to my cheek.

She darts back into the house and settles back into the armchair she'd been sharing with Jasper before our arrival.

I wait for my mate to return from the hunt and when she does she slips her hand into mine, I kiss her soundly and we go into the house together. Nobody asks where we went and why. Nobody wonders what we'd done or why. They just absorb us into the larger group and set about getting to know my mate.

We were married three days later.

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 **Thank you for reading. And reviewing.**

 **Until next time,**

 **Maxi**


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